Commissioned by the Ruskin School of Art at the University of Oxford as part of 14–18 NOW, WW1 Centenary Art Commissions, Shot at Dawn is a new body of work by the photographer Chloe Dewe Mathews that focuses on the sites at which British, French and Belgian troops were executed for cowardice and desertion between 1914 and 1918. The project comprises images of twenty-three locations at which individuals were shot or held in the period leading up to their executions and all were taken as close to the to the exact time of execution as possible and at approximately the same time of year.
The book provides a complete visual record of Shot at Dawn. It also contains a critical analysis of the work by the celebrated writer Geoff Dyer and expert contextual essays on cowardice, desertion and psychological trauma brought on by military service by the acclaimed historians Sir Hew Strachan and Dr Helen McCartney.
Shot at Dawn has been sponsored by Genesis Imaging, one of Britain’s leading photographic laboratories, and the project has been supported by the National Lottery through Arts Council England and the Heritage Lottery Fund and by the British Council, Government of Flanders, John Fell OUP Research Fund and Van Houten Fund.
Texts by Geoff Dyer, Hew Strachan and Helen McCarthy.
