‘We’re
here because we’re here’ saw around 1400 voluntary participants
dressed in First World War uniform appear in locations across the UK
on the 1st
of July 2016. Each participant represented an individual soldier who
was killed on that day one hundred years before. The day long event
marked the centenary of the Battle of the Somme and the 19,240 men
killed on the first day.
Curated
by 14-18 NOW and directed by Jeremy Deller, the work collaborated
with a number of host organisations and covered the width and breadth
of the UK, from Shetland to Plymouth visiting shopping centres, train
stations, beaches, car parks and high streets – taking the memorial
to contemporary Britain and bringing an intervention into people’s
daily lives where it was least expected.
I
worked alongside the National Theatre of Scotland and was
commissioned to document the day long activities in Glasgow city. I
followed the regiments along high streets, train platforms,
concourses, escalators, motorway overpasses, derelict sites and up
and down Glasgow’s unforgiving hills. Under the shadows of monolith
buildings and out into the rare sun, by bench or bus stop, the
procession went. I followed the turned heads and silent contemplation
of a city to a cacophony of hard boots into the long Scottish summer
dusk.
