WIR LEBEN WIE WIR TRÄUMEN: ALLEIN / WE LIVE AS WE DREAM: ALONE

These drawings and inscriptions photographed in this series were left by German prisoners of war, including high ranking SS officers, some of whom would be later tried at Nuremberg.

The prison was located in Wales on the western coast of the UK.

The series takes its title from Joseph Conrad’s novel Heart of Darkness, and is a character’s lament for the impossibility of communicating one’s own experience. Presumably the prisoners created these images for themselves alone, as a source of solace, whether nostalgic, patriotic, romantic or defiant. Most of the camp was demolished in 1994.

The cover image, a photograph by Robert Capa shows Nick Waplington's grandfather. A surgeon that with the hippocratic oath, also treated SS soldiers as any other patient.

Language: English