Shot at Dawn

The book is published in association with the Ruskin School of Art at the University of Oxford.
Produced over the past eighteen months, Shot at Dawn is a new body of work by the British photographer Chloe Dewe Mathews that focuses on the sites at which British, French and Belgian troops were executed for cowardice and desertion between 1914 and 1918. The project comprises images of the locations at which individuals were shot or held in the period leading up to their execution, and all were taken as close as possible to the precise time at which the executions occurred.
The book provides a complete visual record of Shot at Dawn. The titles of the photographs feature the names of the soldiers who were executed and the dates, times and locations of their executions. In addition, the book contains a critical analysis of the work by the celebrated writer Geoff Dyer and expert contextual essays on cowardice, desertion and psychological trauma brought on by military service by the acclaimed historians Sir Hew Strachan and Dr. Helen McCartney