Battlefields

Morvan, a French documentary photographer whose work often depicts conflict, turns his focus to landscape portraiture, documenting historical battlefields from around the world in this evocative photo book. Beginning with the rocky, overgrown hillsides along the West Bank in Palestine, where the Battle of Jericho was fought sometime in the late second millennium BCE, Morvan visits more than 250 major battlefields in chronological order through the First Libyan Civil War in 2011, with photos and brief descriptions of each. Many of the images, captured using a wide-angle lens, depict the calmness of nature long after battles have been concluded. A brown barren field in the French countryside marks the site of the Battle of the Bouvines, which ended the Anglo-French War of 1214. In Mechanicsville, Va., a still creek sits amid a lush forest, where the Battle of Beaver Dam Creek was fought in 1862 during the American Civil War. The combination of historical anecdotes and images fuels readers’ imaginations; for example, a photo of the Isonzo River in Gorizia, Italy, is made harrowing by a paragraph-length caption noting that 50,000 men died in the region during WWI. This striking photo collection provides a new view of the history of war. (Sept.)