Lois Roberts, Remembering our War Dead and the Consequences of Warring (DOCO 2025)

Inspired by my recent bereavements I sort to counteract my losses at Melbourne’s Shrine to Remembrance, the time being round the 18th November 2022ish. And the poppy garden (opium???) surrounding the Legacy Statuette were also all in bloom then. Melbourne’s Shrine to Remembrance was established just before world war two began. The cacti with their thin red protuberances seemed like a phallic symbol from our past eras. What it said to me was something of the biblical story about Moses lost in the bullrushes. When the Pharoahs of Egypt ordered the execution of every male born child to their Israelite Slave population - and Moses was one of the lucky ones who escaped that plight. Placed in a basket in the bullrushes by his female carer. In addition these tiny cacti protuberances seem a symbol of warring past - when (for eg) men held in Ottoman Turk prison complexes - might suffer damage to their genitalia as part of a punishment regime? Set in place when the world was not like its become over a century later with new paradigms of justice in place to prevent these dehumanising and revenge agenda producing policies. Two Great Wars in the Western tradition meant we as a Globe had to transition out of war-time sagas to protect our planet from total annihilation. So my photographs reflected that. My old Canon Rebel now outdated did the rest of the work. And editing to create a semblance of age with an element of decadence and embodied within it - seemed the best option to take for this? And pure B & W did not seem to do the trick. The need for some red in the opium poppies seemed optimal. So I chose to go with neither RBG Colour nor Black and White but partially mono partially enhanced with bits of colour particularly in the final image in the slot of three.

Images have been resized for web display, which may cause some loss of image quality. Note: Original high-resolution images are used for judging.