This week I note that many collagists are moved by the theme of war. Some of their collages are profoundly expressive. I wasn't able to find a symbolic representation of my strong emotion. My two collages this week are simple, literal representations of my response to war. Not just the war in Ukraine, but every war.
There are no winners in war. There is no taming war. Once begun, it has a will of its own. How many times in history has a war begun and the consequences far outstripped the expectations of those who started it?
Belgian Refugees at Start of WWI, 1914
Image credit: Unknown. Public domain
Who dies in war? Soldiers, of course. Many others though, so called collateral damage. In both WWI and WWII the number of civilian deaths exceeded the military deaths, though no one can tell exactly how many people died in those wars.
WWI saw "approximately" 9.7 million military personnel and 10 million civilians killed. Add another 20 million for casualties.
Estimates of death in WWII vary widely according to different sources, but every source places the number of civilian deaths higher than the number of military deaths. One source, sponsored by the U. S. government, places the number of military deaths at over 15 million and the number of civilian deaths at over 38 million. Some would say those civilian death are underestimated, and place the number of civilian deaths in China alone at 50 million.
Memorial for Nanjing Massacre, China, Sino-Japanese War
Image credit:范适安@www.cchere.net Used under CC 3.0 license.
Death is not the only toll. War costs money. It has been suggested that if the kings of France had not drained the treasury in costly imperial wars, there may never have been a French Revolution. It has been argued that WWI was the death knell for Imperial Russia,, and it led to abdication of the Kaiser in Germany.
As is always the case in the LMAC weekly collage challenge, the process began with a template photo offered by @shaka.
This week's photo was beautiful, but all I could think of was war as a theme.
@shaka's photo
My first collage shows a desolate landscape, stripped of life by war. The graveyard in the background and the monks in the foreground remember the dead. As they remember, war continues and the symbol of death on the water suggests that death is still hungry for more victims.
The second collage shows lilies that grow on the battleground where soldiers have fallen. The rifle and helmet are somber reminders of the extinguished lives that have nourished the flowers. Children play in the lilies as war continues and offers the promise of more death.
For my collages I borrowed from my LMAC colleagues who contributed pictures to LIL, LMAC's image library:
The Monks were a gift from @redheadpei.
The Rifle was a gift from @muelli.
The Fire was a gift from @muelli
Death was a gift of @seckorama
The Boat on which death floats was another gift from @redheadpei.
The Gravestones were taken from a picture I contributed to LIL some time ago.
The Artillery image was contributed also by me to LIL a few weeks ago.
Sources outside of LIL
Lily field Vitaliy Gavrushchenko on Unsplash
Helmet AlLes on Pixabay
Children Robert Collins on Unsplash
LIL and LMAC
LMAC is the wonderful collage contest started by @shaka a couple of years ago. Every week bloggers on Hive come together and offer their interpretation of a template photo published by @shaka. Some of the participants are professional artists. Many are not. I am not. And yet, when we make our collages we do become artists for at least a while. There are handsome prizes. I don't compete for these. I just have fun.
Rules and regulations for the contest may be found here, on @shaka's blog.
LIL is an extension of LMAC. The image library is available to everyone in the Hive community. Anyone can borrow an image from our library, which has in excess of 6,000 pictures now. Anyone on Hive can contribute to the library. Contributions are not only welcome, but are supported by the community if rules and procedures are followed. These may be found here.
Thank You
I thank @shaka for leading the LMAC community. I thank @quantumg for his amazing coding skills and hard work. I thank @mballesteros for her hard work and creativity on our LMAC team. And, I thank everyone who participates in the community. People and participation are the essence of LMAC.
