Bob Wielaard

What you see in this blog are impressions, reflections, and historical events from my journey. I work with analog black and white photography. The final photos will follow later.

Beautiful greenblue, indifferent to human concerns. Terrible red, for all the soldiers who died.
Border between Kingdom of Itay and the Austro-Hungarian Empire before World War 1.
Red river for all the soldiers who died. The scene of bitter fightings ending in the Battle of Caporetto.

Making pictures with these metaphoric colors in mind. Dark waters, white rocks, long exposures and later in the dark room I will review the results and print the river photos.
For now the digital phone pics. Sorry…

Mouth of the river.

What you see in this blog are impressions, reflections, and historical events from my journey. I work with analog black and white photography. The final photos will follow later.

Dull picture? Beautiful picture?
Over the past few weeks I have visited many landscapes with the remains of conflicts. Some have been restored, almost as a tourist attraction, others not. Sometimes obvious, sometimes vague, almost swallowed up by nature.
Foibe; one of the most dark and horrible places is here. Unexpectedly I am confronted with my own ‘theme’, ‘obsession’ in this photoseries: beautiful nature, horrible history.
Approaching this place, not so easy to find, next to the road and next to everyday life. A lower spot covered with many trees. If you weren’t aware of it and placed a table in the middle you’d think it was a beautiful picnic spot. But I dó know what happened here and there is a small information board. Completely silent here and I don’t know whether my emotions stem from what I know or from the dark history of this place. Subtly suffocated and sad.
Trees with beautiful leaves partially obscure the dark deep hole, 70 meters almost vertical.

Made a picture and will see later in the dark room…

Want to know the stories? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foibe_massacres

What you see in this blog are impressions, reflections, and historical events from my journey. I work with analog black and white photography. The final photos will follow later.

Haven’t written for a while. Did a lot of hiking and visiting places full of history. It is much. Maybe too much history for a land. Much has changed: there is a lot of flora now which makes it hard to imagine how the bold mountains must have looked like. And the caves, literally and symbolically dark places. Made some pictures there and I am very curious about the results. Later in the dark room, printing.
For now, no more words but (digital) images.

What you see in this blog are impressions, reflections, and historical events from my journey. I work with analog black and white photography. The final photos will follow later.

What to write about this mountain. I am a picture maker…. and so much has been written about this strategically located moutain. This black mountain. This bloody mountain, a Sacred zone in the time of fascism.
Walking there, the impression is overwhelming. Careful in where I point my camera, as if this location carries something of the core, the meaning of my project. Object, subject, metaphor…this needs time and will be continued the following month, in the dark room.
Walking through hundreds of meters of trenches, carved out of the rocks. Even more bizarre than Flander fields if a comparison is appropriate. Buildings, tunnels, caves on the other side.

What you see in this blog are impressions, reflections, and historical events from my journey. I work with analog black and white photography. The final photos will follow later.

Slovenia, Italia, Slovenia, Italia. Zivjo! ‘Dobrodosli’ in Slovenia. Welcome in Italy. My phone keeps sending me texts while walking on this mountain Matajur. There must be beautiful views to Mounts Kanin and Krn, the Friuli lowlands. But now there is too much fog.
Walking in the footsteps of Erwin Rommel. Don’t know if that is such a great thing. Rommel, commanded respect by friend and foe.
Not much happened here till the twelfth Isonzo Battle began.
Can’t see very far, but the rocks here, sometimes split by enormous forces, make an tremendous impression. This is enduring power. More than all the gunfights and whatever.

Monte Matajur

Small chapel on top

A border-line between Italy and Slovenia

 

Picture during the war

Rocks of Monte Matajur

What you see in this blog are impressions, reflections, and historical events from my journey. I work with analog black and white photography. The final photos will follow later.

Thick fog after heavy rainfall during the night and morning at Mount Matajur. That is Italy. Heading for Kolovrat. Had to wait an hour in my car. Coming out a friendly sweet woman is approaching me at the small office of the outdoor museum, starting a chat with me. Not much visitors with this fog, no great views over the valleys. But this fog is very welcome to me when it comes to make pictures. And not only pictures. Somehow this shows more a truth to life, to landscape and memory. I’m wandering around through this bizarre unreal landscape full with scars of history.
Made a picture in a cave.
Is it a melancholic landscape or does it bring out the melancholy in me?
Wandering through these trenches, to be continued, part 2.

What you see in this blog are impressions, reflections, and historical events from my journey. I work with analog black and white photography. The final photos will follow later.

Altitude of 1,313 meter. It was precisly for this reason that Austrian-Hungarian soldiers built a small artillery observation post on this spot and named it ‘Dreizehn-Dreizehn’.
Text: Walk of Piece.

What’s in a number? It took me two hours to climb this beast. Great view. Made a picture at the end of a sort of trench.

(digital image and edited – as an impression. I make analogue photo’s, prints will come later)

What you see in this blog are impressions, reflections, and historical events from my journey. I work with analog black and white photography. The final photos will follow later.

Slovenia, start at the very beginning: spring of the river Soča. I will follow her current, the edges and the history. Magnificent, what a place! But not easy to reach, especially with camera and tripod.
It’s a strange contrast: at the source not very much seems to happen, but less than 100 meters behind me the water flows rough and loudly.
The dark hole, a heavy deep darkness inwhich something is happening we don’t see or understand. It scares me.

What you see in this blog are impressions, reflections, and historical events from my journey. I work with analog black and white photography. The final photos will follow later.

‘Monte pianto, mountain of tears as the Italian soldiers called this battlefield.
Walking over this land in some sunny weather is strange, calm and silent (all the tourists went for Tre Cime). But it is full of trenches and old pictures tell their own story.
Mountain high, civilization low… during the war the northern side was occupied by the Austrians, the south peak by the Italians.
Returning here after two years on this place. Although it is quiet it scares me again. Astonished, baffled by the many scars in this land, a wounded landscape in which you wonder how and thàt humanity is capable of this. Walking and musing about the question of what is the cause of such conflicts.
Well, I have a suspicion. But for now, in this landscape, bearing wittness, somehow I have a feeling many aspects of this project are coming together. Landscape as object, as subject, as metaphor for a personal fuzzy reason of this journey.

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Pictures from the book Monte Piana & Monte Piano by Giuseppe Terza and Danilo de Martin.

Pictures from the book Monte Piana & Monte Piano by Giuseppe Terza and Danilo de Martin.

What you see in this blog are impressions, reflections, and historical events from my journey. I work with analog black and white photography. The final photos will follow later.

Who owns the land?
Monte Piana (=flat mount) and it’s Northern part Monte Piano, was the scene of a lot of fightings between Italians (S) and Austrians (N). In between a saddle: ‘Forcella dei Castrati’. Such a depresssion in the land seems to invite for a horrible battlefield.
Made a picture from Italian side, ‘Looking at Austria’.
Much more about this mountain in part 2.

Making the picture at Forcella dei Castrati