“When captured in black and white, the images of taken from within these bunkers are timeless, universal, and meditative, qualities enhanced by the repetitive nature of the series, as the same viewpoints are shot during various times of day. The seascape photographs of Hiroshi Sugimoto come to mind, the subject rendered both rich and minimal in grey-scale tones. Of this sight, Sugimoto said, "every time I view the sea, I feel a calming sense of security, as if visiting my ancestral home; I embark on a voyage of seeing." Yet in this series, it is not a feeling of protection and stability that pervades. Within each image, the outline of the bunker walls is visible, seeming to cradle the vast and ambiguous sea-line so that the architecture asserts a participatory role in the composition.

The jagged and irregular edges, sloped and uneven, determine the crop of the image and the scope of the sky and sea revealed around the horizon line. The result is an organic hardening of the otherwise edgeless seascape. This presence of the architecture ruptures the pervasive sense of calm at the center of the frame: it is a rupture within stillness. The bunker inserts itself as blurred boundary in a near void, the illusion of infinity in which sea meets the sky. Its presence serves as a reminder of puncturing, divisive forces that co-exist in history and the here-and-now: war, unhealed trauma, and lingering fear.”

Peter Funch