War Sand (2013-19) | June 6, 1944: D-Day. The epic of war, told by a grain of sand...

The seacoast of Normandy churns with history.

In this visionary collection of images, texts, and scientific data, photographer Donald Weber and his colleagues investigate the beaches of D-Day using the latest techniques of forensic analysis. What they find is something far larger than its microscopic constituents: War isn’t just a defining feature of our collective experience, but a quantum event, as well.

The war-relics presented here offer an immersive narrative on the theme of social memory. The assembled D-Day artifacts include WWII spy-craft and old Hollywood movies, dioramas and drone-mounted cameras, private post-war memoirs and wistful seaside photographs. They reveal our civilization's longing for a final victory over death.

War Sand erodes the scale of reality at two levels, both elevating war into narratives and dissolving it into tiny fragments. When history ends, we are left only with a mysterious relationship between myth and micron.