The Last Stand - 4th edition

First published in 2014, this 4th edition is now available.

Between 2010 and 2014, Marc Wilson photographed the images comprising The Last Stand, a body of work aimed at encapsulating the narratives and memories of military conflicts embedded within the landscape. This series comprises 91 photographs documenting the enduring relics of the Second World War along the coastlines of the United Kingdom and northern Europe. Focusing on the military defense structures and their integration into the evolving landscape, Wilson sheds light on their significance. Many of these sites have disappeared, either engulfed by shifting sands and waters or altered by human activities. Simultaneously, others have resurfaced from obscurity, unveiling their historical significance.

Over those four years Marc travelled 23,000 miles to 143 locations to capture these images along the coastlines of the UK, The Channel Islands, northern & western France, Denmark, Belgium and Norway.

From a review by Colin Pantall:

“It's large format work and it's quite beautiful (Paul Virilio's Bunker Archaeology may be the most recognised photography of sea defences but that's a different kind of book) . Everything is shot in subdued diffused light, the pre-dawn it looks like much of the time, and the way in which the different defences merge and crumble into the landscape of which they are now part.

The Last Stand is as multi-layered as the landscapes which it features; there's historical detail wrapped folded over into a chronotopia of functional brutalism, mixed with local touches that feeds into the geological, panoramic and tactical.

All the boxes are ticked in Robert Adams traditional landscape list: there's geography, autobiography, and metaphor. But on top of that, Wilson gives us a politicised view of landscape and power that ties back to survey photography of Timothy O'Sullivan and the work of Mitch Epstein.

Layered into that is an Arcadian vision. With its focus on Northern Europe it's a dystopian Arcadia; there is a pagan feel to Wilson's pictures, a syncretic vision where geology, flora, climate and war find a single expression. And it's beautiful.”