Heike Gallmeier

War & Peace Show:
Normandie 44, Second Battle Group, Minipanzerschlacht, Paratroupeurs, Leibstandarte
5 photographs, each 110 × 130 cm, 2004

In 2004, Heike Gallmeier visited one of the world’s largest meetings of militaria collectors and re-enactment groups: the War & Peace Show, which is held in Beltring, England. Her series of semi-documentary photographs shows living history arrangements and re-enactments of battles according to plans dating from World War II, the Indo-China War, and also more recent conflicts like the war in former Yugoslavia.

Every year, hundreds of enthusiasts gather on farmland in Kent to exhibit collectors’ items, especially vehicles, weapons, and uniforms, to meet war veterans, and to recreate battles; all in front of a broad, family audience. Fear of contact with formerly deadly enemies does not exist here.

The artist’s photographic series allows us to share in this modern adventure-playground with spine-chill factor. The carefully selected scenes of a war-game spectacle shows clearly why there is such fascination with re-enactments. It’s about the longing for authentic experience in a world that is now communicated through media; for a real physical experience that seeks to connect with collective memory, which is now influenced by the media industry’s histo-and militainment. Even though the re-enactments are just another recapitulation, for the actors it means that they actually were in the battle.

At Beltring people actively participate and play-act, stage living images located somewhere between imagination and true-to-reality – this is what aroused the artist’s interest: her attention focuses on tableaux vivants, on spaces of illusion and landscapes of a parallel world, which are created in the context of historical reconstructions. This is a theme that for some time now can be found running through Heike Gallmeier’s sculptural, filmic, and photographic works.

Anke Hoffmann



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