Unique Colourful Family Trees

On a battlefields and cemeteries tour around Ypres I visited the “In Flanders Fields” Museum in the town. A special exhibition, “A Group Photograph: Before, Now and In Between”. is currently running. The British originator and designer, Andrew Latham, is looking for a venue in the UK, where he can transfer the exhibition after 3rd January 2016 and, if he is successful, a visit by genealogists will be well worthwhile

The focus of the exhibition is a photograph of the 8th Battalion Berkshire Regiment before it departed for war in 1915. Andrew collected so much information on the 45 British men who can be seen alongside his great grandfather in the photograph, met so many descendants and unearthed so many historical traces along the way. More than 21 years after first seeing the group photograph of the officers of the 8th Battalion Berkshire Regiment, he now presents a video, a forest of new family trees and 46 stained glass window designs for each of these lives. The exhibition also displays a great number of memorabilia and pictures which have been preserved by the families to this day.

Of particular interest are the innovative family trees, which are drawn as living plants. Alongside a tree, the years are indicated in decades - 100 years before and 100 years after 1915, the year the photo was taken. 1915 is the level of the soil. Below the level of the soil the lifeline of the soldier’s junior years, his parents and other direct ancestors are illustrated as actual plant roots working their way down to 1815. From 1915 the plant grows as the soldier and his descendants are born, marry and pass away until the tree reaches 2015. No two family trees are the same and therefore, in this format, each soldier has his own unique “living”plant.

Andrew Latham has his own website at www.groupphoto.co.uk. Click on each heading lined along the top of the page to learn of the amount of detail, which Andrew has uncovered. To see an example of the unique style of a tree, click on Extra.

I wrote to Andrew, enquiring if he had developed a programme, which I could purchase, but he informed me that he had drawn everything by hand and was seeking a programme designer.

 

Thanks for posting this Brian,I've had a quick look and will go through it all later.

 

Thank you for bringing this to our attention. I was interested in the years of research Andrew did on the photograph and the link to the new group photograph of the descendants who joined him at the exhibition. I've linked the soldiers I could find at the "Lives of the First World War" website to the group photograph and just got in touch with Andrew to let him know that I did so. There were sixteen men who I felt reasonably confident in identifying out of the twenty two who had descendants in the new group photo.
The first was Thomas Gordon Peacock so I used his life to create the evidence link
https://livesofthefirstworldwar.org/lifestory/3442492
and took the lazy approach of citing his story in a link to the other fifteen. I was a bit sad to be the first to "remember" most of the sixteen and delighted to find that one, Douglas Spartalli was already part of a community created by an on-line LOTFWW colleague, for a different reason.
https://livesofthefirstworldwar.org/lifestory/4477792

 

Just coming back to say that I had an email from Andrew this week. The book he wrote about the group photo has proved very popular and he was swamped with requests for it. Judging from his response I think it will be a while before he gets back to the colourful tree aspect.