philip brooker

death sentence

In 1999 a collector showed me some letters written by British soldiers during World War I. I was immediately obsessed by the letters and began reading more of them, until I had read hundreds. The letters that interested me most were those written to women –- to wives, mothers, daughters, girlfriends, sisters. Each letter was more sad, more distressing, more desperate. Many were the last letters these men ever wrote, written with full knowledge that they were going to die. The letters were full of misery and despair, but written in a spirit of bravery and of love. In a strange way, this project has nothing to do with war, it has to do with people being in love, in desperate circumstances.

I was so moved by the letters that I started to research World War I. I was not interested in the tactical aspect of the war, but in the daily lives of the soldiers.

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