Live to Fight: The Photography of Ken Bell

As a photographer with the Canadian Army Film and Photo Unit, Ken Bell was deeply moved by the lived experiences of combatants and civilians in Northwest Europe.

Using Bell’s images and his first-hand recollections along with Canadian tools and equipment common to the late Second World War, this exhibit examines the daily business of fighting and living for Canadian soldiers in Northwest Europe between 1944 and 1945.

Included with regular admission.

Imagine:

0735 Hrs 6 June 1944 –

D-Day: A landing craft loaded with soldiers of the Highland Light Infantry of Canada approaches the French coast. The trip has been turbulent and the men have barely slept since they left England the day before.

In the distance, above the engines and the salt-water spray, heavy guns of Royal Navy destroyers pound the German coastal defenses.

Suddenly an enemy aircraft drops from the sky, buzzing the landing craft, guns rattling.

Young Lieutenant Bell catches up his Rolleiflex camera and vaults on to the deck to capture it. He is grabbed from the back by the Brigade Major and pulled unceremoniously back into cover. “Get down!” the man says.

“But I kept peeking up; I couldn’t resist,” Bell recounted in an interview forty years later.

For George Kenneth ‘Ken’ Bell and his fellow soldiers, this was their first taste of the life they would lead for the next eleven months as the First Canadian Army fought its way off the beaches of Normandy and on into Europe.

As a photographer with the Canadian Army Film and Photo Unit, Ken Bell was deeply moved by the lived experiences of combatants and civilians in North-West Europe. Exposed to tank battles, devastating daylight bombing raids, and the haughty candor of young German prisoners-of-war, his photographs return constantly to the human impacts of conflict: soldiers enjoying a makeshift shower, fearful faces on route to Normandy, glazed exhaustion and mud-caked boots, or cheerful insouciance during a roadside lunch break.

Using Bell’s images and his first-hand recollections along with Canadian tools and equipment common to the late Second World War, this exhibit examines the daily business of fighting and living for soldiers of the First Canadian Army between 1944 and 1945.