In the Steps of...

Cat Auburn

In the Steps Of; Wadi Rum desert, 2018    2024

In the Steps Of; Wadi Rum desert (self), 2018     2024

In the Steps Of; Auchengaich Reservoir, Scotland, 2022     2024

In the Steps Of; Auchengaich Reservoir (self), Scotland, 2022     2024

Photographic prints on Epson Premium Photo Luster 260gsm paper using Epson UltraChrome Pro 12 ink

In the Steps Of is an ongoing autotheoretical photographic series in which Cat challenges traditional war re-enactment as a mode of commemoration. In its simplest form, autotheory combines autobiography and theory, extending thinking-companions beyond academic hierarchies to include friends, non-academics, and personal experience. Autotheory can invert power dynamics by placing lived perspectives on equal footing with sanctioned narratives. By self-filming with cameras inherited from her grandfather (himself a WWII veteran), Cat situates herself within militarised colonial narratives, presenting them as an ongoing discourse rather than something confined to the past.

Two pairs of images from In the Steps Of feature in Approaching Home. One set was photographed during Cat’s visit to the Wadi Rum desert of Jordan, a site of various WWI events and legends. The other set was captured at Auchengaich Reservoir, a military-constructed body of water that supplies the area where both Cat and Christine live. There is a significant military presence in Argyll, as the area is home to Britain’s nuclear naval base, locally known as Faslane.

The photographic series takes its title from Douglas Glen’s 1939 travel guidebook, In the Steps of Lawrence of Arabia. Glen details his efforts to retrace the route taken by noted British figure, T. E. Lawrence through the deserts of the Middle East during WWI. In doing so, he reinscribes colonising narratives onto the region. This is significant because the events of WWI, in which Aotearoa played a role, have had far-reaching implications, contributing to decades of historical and now contemporary unrest in the region. 

Revisiting the routes of historic battles is a common form of reenactment that often reinforces culturally dominant narratives within the landscape. These war reenactments typically involve nostalgic recreations of a battle or military event with meticulous attention to detail in the location, people, uniforms, and equipment. As Svetlana Boym explains: 

“Nostalgia is often a disease of war buffs, not war veterans who prefer to fight staged battles on their own terms. Battlefields have been turned into nostalgic sites where history might be buried but the “experience of battle” can be thoroughly recreated. [. . .] Everything short of killing. [. . .] Recreated battles do not approximate the actual experience of war as much as another real-life experience—that of being an extra on a movie-set. Authenticity here is visual, not historical.”

With In the Steps Of, Cat suggests that inscribing military histories as foundational national narratives necessitates a commitment to collective forgetting. This collective forgetting is crucial for maintaining a cohesive and glorified image of the past, preserving a narrative of national unity. However, this selective memory comes at the expense of acknowledging the complex and uncomfortable truths of colonial history, thereby marginalising indigenous voices and histories.