Blood swept lands...

Completed this page a few times before I felt happy with it, I just couldn't get the right photos on it to look right.

We visited the Tower of London last year to see the amassing art installation "Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red" it was breath taking to see all the poppies and each one representing a British military fatality during the war.

888,246 ceramic poppies filled every inch of the mote and I must admit it felt like there was also that many people there with us on tower hill!! but despite the crowds I was so glad that we got to be there to see it.  We went back to visit the tower a few months later as it was so busy when we went the first time and we didn't get to see everything. Seeing the mote after the poppies have been taken up was very moving, the mote had gone from a sea of beautiful red to a sea of mud and to me it brought visions of the trenches and the loss of so many, but then this was what it was all about. During the time that the poppies were there many people campaigned for them to stay in place for longer than was planned but the message of the instillation was that all those people were lost, that they were all taken down, as beautiful as they were, and as much as others wanted them to stay.

There are a few things on the page that are about the subject more than the aesthetics of the page.

I chose the brown / sepia tone of the page in reference to the mud of the trenches, the tower is famous for its ravens and I have a cut out photo of a raven on the page along with the Keys for tower and a crown for the Crown Jewels that are housed there. The raven made me think of the poem Nevermore that I thought was quite apt for the subject, and so this is also stamped in the background.

As I struggled with photos to put on the page, I realised that I had sitting in the corner of the room one of the poppies from the mote that we had managed to buy before they were all sold out .. so out came the camera and problem solved!