Sue Greenfield

My "When the sirens were going" images are a remembering of wartime treks made across Portsmouth city, SE England, to the safe refuge of bomb shelters cut into the side of Portsdown Hill. I work with photomontage and collage using contemporary images, found archival materials and Covid-19 imagery to create postmemories evoking these treks and shelter experiences; a sense of the past haunting the present. These images evoke a sense of those wartime experiences; the fragmentation of daily life, separation from family and loved ones, the presence of danger, sometimes unseen, but which also echoed within our lives during the pandemic.

Layered landscape...stepping out to the tunnel shelters. [Photomontage]

Trekking to the tunnel shelters... [Photomontage]

Photomontage with original layout of tunnel shelter bunks given to every user.

Thoughts of home. [Photomontage]

Children sitting on bomb damage rubble. [Collage]

Photomontage with used WW2 gasmask.

Referencing unseen dangers - the past haunting the present. [Photomontage]

Layered landscape: the past haunting the present [Photomontage]

The liminal experience of trekking to the shelters. [Photomontage]

Inside the shelter...a musical concert for children. Photomontage with archival photograph and abstract landscape.

Layered landscape: after the all clear has sounded. Photomontage with archival photograph and abstract landscape.

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Sue Greenfield

I am a Hampshire, UK, based photographer interested in memory, absence and presence and the notion of hauntological disruption. This interest was sparked by a walk through Creech Woods in Hampshire. I later came across the almost forgotten role that the woodland played in 1944 in sheltering hundreds of soldiers waiting embarkation for the Normandy D-Day landings. There is no trace today of what took place there. But the notion of landscapes layered with hidden histories gradually disappearing from our collective memory intrigues me.

My work explores these landscapes through the medium of photography, using archival material, photomontage and collage. I use form, colour, shape and line to create visual narratives evoking past events and experiences.

I am currently in my final year studying a BA (Hons) degree in Photography at the Open College of the Arts, Barnsley, England.

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www.suegreenfieldphotography.co.uk/

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