This photography project considers the varied landscapes of North Africa that the Allied soldier of World War II was forced to endure. Thousands of miles from home, largely untraveled and ignorant of lands and peoples outside their home countries, he was dropped onto the shores of what must have seemed to him a dangerous and alien environment—his understanding of the land limited to stereotype, myth and the relevant army field manual. I spent a month in Tunisia in February 2011 and just returned from a month in Libya to photograph these “unfamiliar” North African landscapes upon which many crucial battles in the North African Campaign were fought. With the 70th anniversary of Al Alamein closely at hand this year as well as the anniversary of the end of the North African Campaign next year, and the current unrest in this region, these images become quite germane.
