Shot at Dawn 

Chloe Dewe Mathews

Irish Museum of Modern Art 2015

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It was a cold but very sunny November morning when I walked thorugh the arches of IMMA, in Dublin.

Shot at Dawn is a new body of work by the British photographer Chloe Dewe Mathews that focuses on the sites at which soldiers from the British , French amd Belgian armies were executed for cowardice and desertion during the First World War.

The images are on a very large scale which allows the viewer to almost enter and be part of the scene, in its reflection.

They are empty places. No longer habited and some overgrown. The images were taken as close to the time of day at which the executions occured.

Soldiers were routinely shot for breaches of military discipline. Today there seems little doubt that at least some of them were suffering from psychiatric illnesses.

I walked around in a bit of a daze. The scale of the images in the small white rooms evoked a feeling of claustrophobia and loss. The knowledge that the exhibition space was once a hospital played on my mind. This was emotional.

The images were crisp and bleak, and eery. What terrible places to die. What skilful and melancholy photographs.

What cruelty in the name of morale and discipline.