Since the dawn of consciousness, human beings have devised a variety of methods and tools to kill one another. Whether it be a spear or automatic firearm, the imagination, ingenuity, and sheer brutality that people are capable of never cease to bewilder.
During a dark period of history where much of the world was embroiled in WW1, chemical and biological weapons saw an exponential rise in experimentation and use. With great powers seeking control and victory, the world for the first time saw large scale chemical warfare, resulting in 1.3 million casualties and roughly 100,000 fatalities during WW1, according to the Science History Institute.
Although the Geneva Protocol signed in 1925 banned the use of chemical weapons in warfare, it did not prohibit the development, production or stockpiling of chemical weapons. It would be 68 years later when the Chemical Weapons Convention is signed in 1993 that banned the development, production and stockpiling of chemical weapons.
Setting Mind interviews Dara McGrath, a photographer who investigated and took images of over 80 sites in the United Kingdom that were potentially contaminated by the production, testing, storage and disposal of chemical and biological weapons.
Setting Mind: The photographs taken as part of Project Cleansweep are beautiful yet the underlining fact that the sites potentially contain residual contamination from chemical and biological weapons is chilling. What kind of emotions and thoughts do you hope for the photographs to evoke?
Dara McGrath: It was very intentional of me to use these two parameters – beauty and death – in the photographs. My reasoning was to upset the notion of the bucolic English landscape of white picket fences and rose gardens.
All landscape has a history and we have got to consider that there is hardly a place in the world that has not been touched or influenced by man.
My intention was to create a body of photographs that might appear beautiful, but upon reading the captions, you are thrown sideways. What you thought was true is not, and it is the dichotomy of these two elements – death and beauty – that brings an uncomfortable new reality to the images. Also, it was important to consider the sites as a collective, along with the in-depth research of four key sites. It means the immensity of what went on there over the last hundred years becomes clearer.
Which site left the largest impact on you?
Without a doubt, Gruinard Island in North Western Scotland. Gruinard Island, aka ‘Anthrax Island’ was the site of a 1942 British military experiment that consisted of exploding an anthrax bomb over eighty sheep on the island. Given that anthrax spores can remain dormant for over one hundred years, this rendered the island off-limits for over seventy years.
I spent two nights camping on the island when I photographed it in 2016. Going to it, I was filled with dark thoughts regarding what happened there, but on reaching it I was totally overwhelmed by its beauty, its flora and fauna, which had remained untouched for so long.
While you were traveling and photographing the landscape and sites, did you get the sense that locals were aware that the environment was potentially contaminated?
Some people were unperturbed by these sites, whereas with others it was a complete shock. Others were thankful that the rumours surrounding the sites were now put to rest, as a result of my fact-checking.
However, the work also raised local – not unrelated issues – concerning the environment. For instance, at Portreath in Cornwall, they were more worried about the amount of arsenic in the land following centuries of mining. Or in the Gowar Peninsula in South Wales, the local clam and cockle industries were being devastated by waterborne pollution in the estuaries where they are harvested.
Do you have any plans on photographing contaminated sites outside of the UK?
Such was the scale of these landscapes and sites used in the United Kingdom that I still haven’t documented all of them. They are still being brought to light through local news reports. For instance, a large dump of chemical weapons from WWII was found in Lincolnshire last year. The Ministry of Defence in the United Kingdom also undertook experimental tests in the Bahamas in the 1950s with the help of US armed forces; it operated in Nigeria in the 1960s and it also helped set up testing programmes in Australia and Canada.
This is not even to mention the dozens of marine sites all over western Europe used to dump Nazi stockpiles directly after the war. As I have spent nine years photographing these sites, I think it is time to move onto something else and pass the reigns onto somebody else to research.
Unfortunately, chemical and biological weapons still persist in the 21st century. A notable example is the use of chlorine gas in the Syrian civil war. In your opinion, do you see chemical and biological weapons being fazed out over the years or will they see a rise in use?
I don’t see them being phased out in any way, but their context will change as the need to strike fear and terror into people will change depending on the circumstances.
We have seen recently more personal attacks in Salisbury and against Kim Jong Un’s brother in Singapore airport.
Most recently, it has been countries like Russia and North Korea that have been the main perpetrators in the use of these weapons against the ‘West’. The aim is to cause disruption and fear. The use of these weapons will continue and evolve.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
To learn more about Project Cleansweep, click the link below.
