|
This work asks the viewer to explore the divide between the young men who served with Australian forces in the First World War and the young, Australian men of today.
I began exploring this idea through my own family archive by thinking about the parallels between my brothers, and my great uncles, who both enlisted in the Australian Imperial Forces in the First World War.
My uncle George was wounded in Gallipoli at age 23, returned to Australia to re-enlist and was then deployed to Egypt with the 12th Light Horse.
My uncle Frank set out for the Western Front with the 20th Battalion and was killed in action on 27 March 1917, aged 19.
The First World War seems like an eternity ago to the youth of today. But the very real truth is that a few short generations ago thousands of young Australians were sent to their deaths on the other side of the world, yet we see them as old men who are far removed from today's world, relics of the past.
They were not old soldiers but young men whose ideas of masculinity, patriotism and youth may have not differed greatly from the ideas of today's young Australians.
|
