Before They Were Fallen is a project dealing with remembrance. Myself and Katy Regan use the power of photography and testimony together, to link memory, the passing of time and loss to create a body of work which pays tribute to the British soldiers who gave their lives in the Afghanistan conflict.
This blog is dedicated to giving news of the exposure the work has been receiving, which with the help of our really excellent public relation guru Helen Nesbitt has been impressive. Thankyou @helennesbitt.
Please forgive the numbers and technical nature of the post here, I just wanted a place to share all the wonderful exposure and the progress of the work in detail, a summary is available on the news page.
Press and Publicity
16/09/2015 Phill Coombes BBC
This post leads to a sharp spike of visits ( 5000 a day ) to my site louisquail.com and 5100 shares, whilst on the main page.
Following this publicity I discovered 200 secondary shares on the National Arboretum blog with many overwhelmingly positive comments and is hopefully representative of secondary sharing which is hard to track.
British Forces Broadcasting Service carry out a radio interview by Nicky Smith (@producernicky) which can be downloaded here.
31/10/2015 Publication
Guardian Weekend ( publishes as scheduled, running the project over seven pages ; the project is shared 3100 times on Facebook and other platforms; Candis Magazine scheduleto run the story in the February 2016 issue.
Touring show – 18/09/2015, Four Corners Gallery – 05/11/2015 Oriel Colwyn.
The exhibition has been well received at both venues. In Wales we received local coverage from the North Wales Pioneer and impressively a visit from ITV Wales with a prime time news slot on the 05/11/2015 (395000 estimated viewers); in addition they hosted the work on the main ITV web site.
There have also been many supportive and warm comments.
To coincide with the showing at Fife FotoSpace Gallery in Glenrothes, Scotland (18/01/2015 until 25/02/2106) a talk about the work at Napier University was given and both Forces TV (27000 viewers daily 582 online sharers ) and Scottish ITV (6800000 estimated viewers ) broadcast short films.
There have been two more requests to show the work , news to follow, perhaps at the end of this year.
Helena Tym told us in her interview, “For me, Cyrus lives until the last person who says his name, dies. …I want people to know that our soldiers are not just machines who go out there for killing, that they’re human beings; who had family who loved them very much”.
So keeping the memories alive is hugely important and knowing the work has been so well received is also very rewarding. I will leave you with this spontaneous tweet from respected photographer Abbi Trayler-Smith. Its very welcome and representative of the warmth of feeling the work has generated.
As always its been a privilege to share these stories.