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Summary of research The cultural geography of camouflage.
As a modern technology, camouflage has worked both to stem and accelerate the flow of violence. During WWII, camouflage was the soldier’s talisman, warding off his worst fears, and, the trap waiting to ensnare him. My research into cultures and geographies of conflict camouflage charts a multi-faceted biography of this militarised technology. Moving through the scientists’ fieldsite, the artists’ studio, the magicians’ stage, the politicians’ boardroom and the soldiers’ battlefield, I uncover the history of this most ambiguous of inventions, and its diverse applications, subverting a long dominant narrative of camouflage as protective technology to reveal its darker patterning. I reveal how camouflage is a jarring technology, combining aesthetic and artistic appreciation with the complex scientific theory, to guileful or most deadly effect. Camouflage transformed battlefields into tricksy and unsettling theatres of war. By understanding the camouflage methods of dazzle, disruption and deception, and the interactions of art, science, theatre and the military deceivingly benign histories can be distorted through observant geographies.
Funded by the AHRC Supervisors Dr Hayden Lorimer
Professor Chris Philo
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