Marc Wilson

Since 2010 Marc has been photographing the images that make up The Last Stand. This piece of work aims to reflect the histories and stories of military conflict and the memories held in the landscape itself. The series is made up of 86 images and is documenting some of the physical remnants of the Second World War on the coastlines of the British Isles and northern Europe, focusing on military defence structures that remain and their place in the shifting landscape that surrounds them. Some of these locations are no longer in sight, either subsumed or submerged by the changing sands and waters or by more human intervention. At the same time others have re-emerged from their shrouds.

Over these four years Marc has travelled 23,000 miles to 143 locations to capture these images along the coastlines of the UK, The Channel Islands, Northern & Western France, Denmark, Belgium and Norway.

The idea for this work came out of an older project of his which had contained some locations involving wartime history. His European background and (like many others) own family histories drew him towards a project on this subject matter. Marc has always been interested in the idea of the landscape and the objects we place in it as holding the stories, histories and memories of the past. As the time beyond an event or era grows further these memories, accounts, or documents are sometimes all that we are left with.