England

     ..Estonia         ------Latvia   .-Poland ..........Germany
Playgrounds of War
 
   

 

The foundations of Glover’s project lie in her own past. As a child in the 1950’s she travelled by pony and trap to the deserted former secret WWII airbase and former 1960’s nuclear missile base at Harrington, Northamptonshire, England.
This is where she lives today. In the 1980s, she began photographing the site and some of her pictures capture her daughter playing there as she once played.

The recent pictures of Harrington reflect Gina’s own changing photographic and artistic practice.
These range from harsh black and white toned pictures from the 1980’s, depicting, for example,
a small child lost against foreboding concrete structures, to the more surreal quality of colour pinhole
photographs she uses today. Using long exposures and the layering of light, the clouded sky
seems to have capacity to dislodge what otherwise are massive and immoveable monumental
concrete edifices.

More information on Harrington airfield and nuclear base here.

 

 

  

In 2007, Gina began to explore decommissioned military bases in Latvia and Estonia. These places were shrouded in secrecy for so long that even recent maps around Estonia civil airport remain full of ‘errors’.
To find the bases information was gleaned from unreliable sources like the internet, she found it difficult to deal with what was for unreadable signage and the uncertainty of knowing whether or not sites were still out of bounds or what dangers lay within them. Lacking the local language she communicated through eye contact, mime, scribbles and drawings.
Thus, as much guided by chance as by plan Glover’s travels deposited her in windswept, still-secret places, so deserted and so lonely they seemed to her as she was the first to discover it.

   Paldiski became a Soviet nuclear submarine training centre in 1962. The entire city was closed off and surrounded by barbed wire until 1994. It was inhabitated by aproximately 16000 Soviet military personnel. Today the number of inhabitants is around 4000, mostly Russian speaking.  

Abandoned Soviet army base
Sorve Peninsula, Saaremaa
2007

Abandoned Soviet army base,
Saare, Saaremaa,
2007

After World War II there were over 30
Soviet Army bases in Estonia.

 Bunker and lighthouse,
Saare, Saaremaa
2007

Bunkers and sea fortifications,
Karosta, Liepaja
2007

These sea fortifications built under Tsar Alexander of Russia were then destroyed by the Russians in 1908 as the result of a pact with Germany. After World War ll, Karosta became the second largest Soviet Naval Base after St Petersburg.

 

'Snail' (Schneckenstand) 
Prussian observation bunkers
1910-1914,
Swinouscie
2009

In March 2009 Gina continued her investigations of sites of war. She left a snow bound UK and headed for the equally snowy Baltic seaport of Swinouscie in the extreme North West; a city divided in two by the river Swina, part in Poland and the other in Germany.
There she found apparently randomly distributed 'Snails' (Schneckenstand ), Prussian observation bunkers from 1910-1914, ironically painted in camouflage but shinning out in the snow.

German guardroom bunker
World War ll,
Swinouscie
2009

  

Model of V2 Rocket
Peenemünde Museum, Usedom
2009

She visited Peenemünde Military Test Site and Museum on the Island of Usedom, described as ‘once the most modern technological facilities in the world in the years between 1936 and 1945. The first launch of a missile into space took place here in October 1942… From the start this research was directed toward one goal only: achieving military superiority through advanced technology...

Slave labourers, concentration camp inmates and prisoners of war provided the work that enabled the construction of the test sites and the later serial production of the rockets, which the Nazi propaganda referred to as "Vergeltungswaffe 2" ( or "Vengeance Weapon 2"), in so short a period of time. Both the inhuman labour conditions and the attacks on Belgian, British and French cities using the supposed "wonder weapon" claimed thousands of lives.

Model of V2 Rocket
Peenemünde Museum, Usedom
20
K
09
The ambivalent nature of technological progress is uniquely reflected in the story of Peenemünde. The collision of science and technology exemplified by the complex, together with an account of the historical development of rocketry are the main focus of the exhibition of the Peenemünde Historical Technical Information Center. It is housed in the power station of the former Army Testing Site - the largest technical monument in the German state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern serves as an. In 2002 the museum was awarded the Coventry Cross of Nails for its efforts toward reconciliation and world peace.’ (www.peenemuende.de)

In the grounds of the museum, amid falling snow, military displays radiated an austere aura of their fascinating past.