Image and Memory: Life at Home in World War II
An exhibition by contemporary artist Diane Howse of film stills and home movie footage from the Yorkshire Film Archive exploring British home life in World War II.
17 March 2010 – 12 June 2010
Private View Tuesday 16 March, 6-8pm
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In this unique and ground-breaking collaboration between artist-led contemporary art space PSL and the Yorkshire Film Archive, artist Diane Howse presents film stills and home movie footage exploring the theme of image and memory through life at home in Yorkshire during World War II.
The home movie footage depicting everyday life in the region really stood out among the Archive’s collections, skewed as that often was by events happening overseas and the daily threat of air raids. What’s really new in this partnership is the unusual focus on amateur, home movie footage and the people who made or featured in the films.
Artist Diane Howse, who is based in Yorkshire, has worked with the YFA material over several months. She says, ‘after a considerable period of looking at the film footage, a number of elements began to emerge, including the poignancy of families at home with small children, trying to lead ordinary lives against the backdrop of the war’. The physical and aesthetic qualities of the old film stock also appealed and the serendipities of frames in which the film-making process becomes apparent. Watching the small gauge films frame by frame on editing equipment revealed details such as the splices joining different scenes, images lost to chemical degradation, or the contrast between some colours which are resistant to time and those that have faded.
The exhibition at PSL will contain an immersive installation of projections using selections from the original footage – most of which is unexpectedly in colour. In addition there is an exhibition of specific film stills which capture tiny fragments of imagery and sometimes startling juxtapositions. The images are intriguing and often unexpected: a German fighter plane being taken through very ordinary suburban streets; people wearing gas masks in the street; children playing on the beach or evacuees trying to enjoy a birthday party.
The exhibition explores the notion of how we connect with history and how we know history, inviting us to examine our perspectives. Although the material is over sixty years old, it retains its relevance in the light of international conflicts going on around the world today, not least for the families of British soldiers deployed in Afghanistan.
I Can Still See You is part of a Big Lottery Fund supported programme delivered by the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council (MLA) and called Their Past Your Future Phase 2 Programme. The exhibition was developed in partnership with the Yorkshire Film Archive.
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Image: From the film “Family Snapshots” (1937-1941) from the Folliott-Ward
collection, courtesy of Heather Reynolds and the Yorkshire Film Archive.
'Yorkshire Beaches'
Hickling Family during the war, 1940s
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