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# Shooting Sites of Execution
- URL: https://hyperallergic.com/shooting-sites-of-execution/
- Published: 2014-12-10T15:40:20.000Z
- Updated: 2025-11-24T16:16:16.000Z
- Description: In 2006, Britain's Ministry of Defense officially pardoned 306 soldiers it had executed for cowardice or desertion during World War I. Photographer Chloe Dewe Mathews has embarked on her own photographic tribute to them.
- Author: Laura C. Mallonee
- Tags: Art, Photo Essays, Photography, World War I, #wp, #wp-post, #image-position-hidden, #Import 2025-11-24 07:08 (2014, 2015, part 2)

!["Private Joseph Byers,  Private Andrew Evans, 
Time unknown / 6.2.1915; Private George E. Collins, 07:30 / 15.2.1915; Six Farm, Loker, West-Vlaanderen" by Chloe Dewe Mathews, 2013  ](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2014/11/w7rut-e1417187483295.jpg)

Chloe Dewe Mathews, “Private Joseph Byers, Private Andrew Evans, Time unknown / 6.2.1915; Private George E. Collins, 07:30 / 15.2.1915; Six Farm, Loker, West-Vlaanderen” (2013)

In 2006, Britain’s Ministry of Defense officially [pardoned](http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5662527&ref=hyperallergic.com) 306 soldiers it had executed for cowardice or desertion during World War I. Many of them were underage, suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder, and hadn’t been given a fair trial. Among them, 16-year-old Herbert Burden had lied about his age so he could join the army; after he fled a massacre 10 months later, he was shot by firing squad. Burden later came to represent these ill-fated young men: his likeness was used in a [monument](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shot%5Fat%5FDawn%5FMemorial?ref=hyperallergic.com) commemorating them, titled “Shot at Dawn.” Photographer [Chloe Dewe Mathews](http://www.chloedewemathews.com/?ref=hyperallergic.com) borrowed that name when she embarked on her own photographic tribute, commissioned by the Ruskin School of Art as part of [14–18 NOW](http://www.1418now.org.uk/?ref=hyperallergic.com) and currently on view at [Stills](http://www.stills.org/exhibition/future-exhibition/shot-dawn-chloe-dewe-mathews?ref=hyperallergic.com) center for photography in Scotland.

For the series, the photographer visited 23 execution sites around the same time and season as when the soldiers died there. These landscapes may now be quiet and even bucolic, but Mathews’s photographs ensure that their past horrors are not forgotten. As Geoff Dyer, who introduced the accompanying [monograph](http://bookshop.ivorypress.com/product/shot-dawn?ref=hyperallergic.com) by Ivorypress, wrote in [*Harper’s*](http://harpers.org/archive/2014/06/stop-time/?ref=hyperallergic.com), “When no grave or memorial is in view, one still understands — one feels — that this is more than just a conventionally pleasing landscape, even if the particulars of what has happened remain unknown. History has taken root here.”

!["Soldat Ahmed ben Mohammed el Yadjizy, Soldat Ali ben Ahmed ben Frej ben Khelil, Soldat Hassen ben Ali ben Guerra el Amolani, Soldat Mohammed Ould ben Ahmed, 17:00 / 15.12.1914, Verbranden-Molen, West-Vlaanderen" by Chloe Dewe Mathews, 2013 ](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2014/11/k2cxu-e1417187638166.jpg)

Chloe Dewe Mathews, “Soldat Ahmed ben Mohammed el Yadjizy, Soldat Ali ben Ahmed ben Frej ben Khelil, Soldat Hassen ben Ali ben Guerra el Amolani, Soldat Mohammed Ould ben Ahmed, 17:00 / 15.12.1914, Verbranden-Molen, West-Vlaanderen” (2013)

!["Soldaat Jean Raes, Soldaat Alphonse Verdickt, Time unknown / 21.9.1914, Walem, Mechelen, Antwerpen" by Chloe Dewe Mathews, 2013](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2014/11/nzzq2-e1417187750223.jpg)

Chloe Dewe Mathews, “Soldaat Jean Raes, Soldaat Alphonse Verdickt, Time unknown / 21.9.1914, Walem, Mechelen, Antwerpen” (2013)

!["Private Herbert Chase, 04:30 / 11.6.1915, Sint-Sixtusabdij, Proven, Westvleteren" by Chloe Dewe Mathews, 2013 ](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2014/11/shot-at-dawn-4.jpg)

Chloe Dewe Mathews, “Private Herbert Chase, 04:30 / 11.6.1915, Sint-Sixtusabdij, Proven, Westvleteren” (2013)

[Shot at Dawn, Chloe Dewe Mathews](http://www.stills.org/exhibitions/current?ref=hyperallergic.com) *is on view at Stills (23 Cockburn Street, Edinburgh, Scotland) through January 25, 2015.*