Organized by  the Permanent Mission of Belgium to the United Nations Office and specialized institutions in Geneva

World War One

Far from Home

About the exhibtion’s background:

In the autumn of 2018, the commemorations of the centenary of World War I (1914 – 1918) will draw to a close. The celebrations marking the centenary started in 2014 and gathered people from all over the world, heads of state and governments and royal families.

One of the main fronts of the war was the Western corner of Belgium bordering France and the Channel (North Sea). The terrible war of the trenches was a horrific experience that claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands of soldiers who fought for a few kilometers in each battle. Today, the Western corner of Belgium, also known as ‘De Westhoek’, is littered with war graves and commemoration monuments. These battlefields are often associated with Lieutenant – Colonel John McCrae’s poem ‘In Flanders Fields’ and the red poppies that grew over the graves of fallen soldiers. The ‘Great War’ was the first global conflict where chemical weapons were used on a large scale. The League of Nations rose from its ashes. All of this is part of the known story and of our collective memory.

Typically thought of as a European conflict, this war in fact involved soldiers from all five continents. People from Africa, the Pacific, Oceania, the Caribbean, North America and Asia traveled thousands of miles to end up in an inhospitable, cold, rainy place to bear arms and fight both armed opponents and unfamiliar diseases, while struggling in the mud.

About the exhibition and photographer:

This exhibition depicts the less told stories of the thousands of young men of different nationalities and ethnicities, who were – given the historical distribution of powers – either enlisted or volunteered into a European conflict.

A global perspective on World War I offers multiple narratives about resistance, bravery and cross-cultural encounters that reveal both hostility and fascinated curiosity. The dire trench conditions of the Western front were intolerable for all soldiers during the long winter months. For the young men so far from home encountering a climate, culture and cuisine that was utterly foreign, it must have been especially dispiriting.

Over 600,000 colonial soldiers were either involved in the war or served as supporting workers at the front. Unlike other conflicts that preceded and followed World War I, official photographic records were tightly restricted. These photographs, mainly taken as personal mementos by individual soldiers, which often depict everyday life on the front, document the young people who gave their lives to fight a war far from home.