70 years ago on June 6,1944, over 9,000 soldiers and civilians were killed or wounded on the beaches of Normandy during WWII. As a tribute to the fallen soldiers, two artists Andy Moss and Jamie Wardley along with a team of 60 volunteers from all over the world took to the Arromanches beach with stencils of silhouettes. After word spread of what they were doing, local residents came to help and soon almost 500 people took part making the memorial before it was washed away by the tide. Jamie wrote, “ *…when we lifted the stencil I realized that we had just made together the first of the Fallen, a representation of a person that once lived, they had parents, family friends. This person had died prematurely due to a conflict and we were marking his passing. When I make a sculpture or a drawing in my imagination that person is for a moment very much there, I will often find myself talking to them to see what they are thinking and how they are feeling, there becomes a connection between me and them. The person that we had drawn was very present indeed, we had made a connection and I was for a moment overwhelmed.*”
