Fallen

A series of landscape tableaus depicting aircraft wreckage crash that lies scattered over the moors of the Peak District National Park. Over one hundred aircraft have succumbed to this cloud-concealed and brooding terrain, many during the World War Two era.

In making this work, Nicholas Holt was inspired by the Brueghel painting ‘Landscape with The Fall of Icarus’ (c. 1555). Which has been described as a ‘parable on human aspiration’.

These sites represent an intersection of history and tragedy with the geography of the Dark Peak. They also touch on the complexity of human intertwinement with nature – showing the wreckage as both an imposter and as part of the wild landscape.

For months Nicholas Holt researched and walked the moors searching for the exact locations of these sites. At even the most remote locations he found a some kind of marker; a wooden cross; a poppy wired to a wing; a plaque or a flag to mark the loss of a human life. Revealing the great lengths that the British people will go to commemorate the fallen on the this forbidding moorland.

2020

Featured in Geographical Magazine
Exhibited at Dark Peak Photography Festival