Objets d’ Mort
© Giles Duley“They carried all they could bear, and then some, including a silent awe for the terrible power of the things they carried.” ― Tim O'Brien, The Things They Carried
Objets d’ Mort is the first body of work in Duley’s series The Things They Carried. The project distils notions of heroism, glorification of violence and wars legacy down to simple items carried by soldiers.
As a young boy, like many, Duley was seduced by war and its apparatus. Films, comics, and the history taught to him in school romanticised and deified past wars, especially those fought by the British Empire. There is no glory or victory, it is brutal, violent and the worst act of man.
In these still-lives, Duley aims to seduce the viewer, falling back on the skills he developed as a fashion photographer in his youth. Bombs, landmines, and grenades are presented as commercial items of beauty.
For twenty years Duley has documented and campaigned about the lethal hidden legacy of landmines and Unexploded Ordnance (UXO). Time and time again people have looked away, so he wanted to create a series of images that they could not avoid. Commercial ‘advertising’ images of devices designed to maim and kill, insidious weapons that lurk, hidden for generations after wars have passed. The images are also a reminder that at its core, the industrial military complex is profit driven. Long after the profits have been shared, and the peace deals signed, civilians are still killed from the wars’ legacy.
In France and Belgium, the ‘Iron Harvest’ of unexploded munitions from World War One still kill and injure over one hundred years after the war. A reminder that current wars will result in children dying decades from now, if we don’t do something children not even born will become victims of the violence in our world today.
The series includes the first air dropped bomb from WW1, cluster munitions used by the US during the Vietnam War, and grenades converted for drone use in Ukraine. Manufactured by the world’s richest nations, they legacy contaminates the poorest. In Laos the US dropped at least 270 million cluster bomblets. Of those, it is thought that 80 million failed to explode and are still maiming and killing fifty years after illegal the war ended.
These large-scale photographs are of devices created for profit and death. Wars only end when the killing stops, and the bombs in this series are as lethal today as on the day they were dropped.
Objets d’Mort is a reminder that at its core, the industrial military complex is profit driven. Long after these profits have been shared, and the peace deals signed, civilians still die and are maimed by these weapoms that litter former battlefields and civilian areas as Explosive Remnants of War (ERW).
In France there is still an area known as the Zone Rouge where contamination from WW1 still means the land is uninhabitable.
During the Vietnam war, the U.S. dropped roughly 270 million cluster bombs on Laos, up to 30% of which did not explode. In Vietnam an estimated 40,000 people have died and 60,000 are injured in UXO-related cases since 1975.
Ukraine is now the most mined country in the world with up to 30% of its territory contaminated with landmines and Unexploded Ordnance. Landmines have been documented in 11 of Ukraine’s 27 regions.
In Palestine there are an estimated 7,500 metric tons of live munitions scattered throughout the Gaza Strip, it could take 14 years to clear Gaza of these UXO.
click to view the complete set of images in the archive