Somber, ravishing panoramas of the D-Day beaches

Between 2003 and 2005 and again in 2019, Spanish photographer Eduardo Nave (born 1976) traveled to the beaches of Normandy, France, where the largest sea invasion in history took place during World War II. Known today as D-Day, the event is commemorated yearly as both a military victory and a devastating loss of life for thousands of soldiers. Nave’s panoramic photographs of the historical beaches show a great sprawl of sand, the sea rendered with a nearly painterly texture as it drifts toward the shore. An atmosphere of somber beauty befalls the imagery: beachgoers sporadically emerge as shadowy figures from the fog, but the photographs mostly depict vast landscapes bereft of people. The emotionally affecting pictures, collected in this volume on the occasion of D-Day’s 75th anniversary in 2019, remind readers of the lingering effects of history even when an environment has seemingly returned to normal.