Unseen Waterloo: The Conflict Revisited

Unseen Waterloo: The Conflict Revisited, is a series of portraits by photographer Sam Faulkner exploring how we remember the fallen from a time before photography was invented. Since 2009, Faulkner has travelled to the annual Waterloo re-enactment in Belgium to photograph the soldiers who take part, dressed in the historically accurate uniforms each participant creates, with painstaking attention to detail, for the event. From his pop-up studio situated on the battlefield, Faulkner has made dramatic and painterly portraits which evoke the forgotten faces of Waterloo and re-imagine moments of glory, of hope and defeat. This limited edition book accompanies the exhibition of the same name at Somerset House London. Curated by international stage director and designer Patrick Kinmonth, the exhibition presents 70 life-size images hung against a backdrop of Hainsworth fabric, the rich scarlet woollen cloth used to dress the red- coat soldiers in 1815, still made today in exactly the same way at the original British mill. The book has a first print run of 1815 copies plus 200 numbered Artist's editions. It was officially launched at Somerset House on 18th June 2015, the 200th anniversary of the battle. It is a large photo book measuring approximately 370 x 290mm with around 240 pages. Limited to a print run of just 1815 copies, the 1815 Edition is beautifully finished in blue cloth with a silver map of the order of battle debossed on the cover. The book includes three texts; A preface by Sam Faulkner, the artist; A historical essay by writer Nicholas Foulkes; and an essay about the art inspired by Waterloo by art historian Satish Padiyar. Unseen Waterloo: The Conflict Revisited is my attempt to re-interpret and imagine the non-existent portraits from 1815. Waterloo is often cast as a battle between Great Men and certainly we ve all seen the grand paintings of Napoleon and Wellington from the con- flict, however we don t have personal images of the men who actually fought and died that day. A hundred years later in the First World War, the fallen soldiers names are chiselled forever into granite in every town of Europe, but the forces of Waterloo are virtually unknown. This work attempts to reclaim the Battle of Waterloo for the valiant 200,000 who have been lost to history., Sam Faulkner 2015.