The display Bringing the War Home: 3-D Images from the Battlefields of WWI is currently taking place at Nelson’s Touchstones in Gallery B.
Bringing the War Home brings these images to Touchstones, adapted for use with red and blue glasses and projected on the wall. The exhibit runs until Sunday, November 23 and is open by donation from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Remembrance Day (November 11), with all donations going to the Nelson Branch of the Royal Canadian Legion.
“In the trenches, one does not speak so complacently of dying and sacrifice and victory as do those who are left behind. One who is here makes the best he can of the bitter necessity of suffering and death.”
From Names on a Cenotaph by Sylvia Crooks, originally published in Home News for Canadian Soldiers, the Daily News, July 22, 1915.
“Now all roads lead to France
And heavy is the tread
Of the living; but the dead
Returning lightly dance”
Excerpt from Roads, by Edward Thomas
Ask yourself, where would you be if the year was 1914? The First World War began 100 years ago. For many of those that served, it would be almost impossible to describe to others what they experienced there.
Perhaps to help remedy this, when William Sturgeon returned home after the war, he brought with him a selection of stereoscopic images he had purchased. They were sold by the French company Lumiere and Jougla, and were taken on or near the front lines.
Stereoscopy was an early form of 3-D photography, the same type which the View-Master would use in later years. When placed in a viewer, the images give the illusion of depth, bringing an added dimension to these sometimes chilling scenes.
Touchstones Nelson: Museum of Art and History is located at 502 Vernon Street. For information call 250-352-9813.