Photographer Michael St Maur Sheil’s latest Fields of Battle, Lands of Peace exhibition is taking place in Passandale Church as part of the Third Battle of Ypres commemorations now under way in Flanders.
Wooden crates used by farmers for packing vegetables are used in the layout to symbolise the regeneration of the land around the village of Passandale (the modern spelling of Passchendaele).
Mike Sheil’s photographs reveal how the First World War battlefields have often been transformed into landscapes of haunting beauty and tranquillity.
Zonnebeke Council commissioned his current event in Passandale for the Centenary of the 1917 battle which reduced fields and villages to muddy wastelands.
“This is where I mounted the first exhibition in 2007 and I am honoured to have been asked back,” Mike Sheil told Centenary News.
‘Fields of Battle, Lands of Peace’ is at Passandale Church until 12 November 2017. More information about Mike Sheil’s WW1 Centenary photographic projects can be found here. Centenary News reviewed his April 2017 US Centennial exhibition in London.