Bunker Research: War-time modernism in the mountains
Max Leonard and Camille McMillan’s award-winning book of the crumbling concrete defences of the French Alps is a testament to the futility of war.
Dotted across the landscape of the French Alps are the remnants of the concrete bunkers of the ‘little Maginot line’, an Alpine extension of the infamous (and ultimately inadequate) border fortifications constructed during WWII in an attempt to protect France from invasion.
Most of the bunkers never saw action, languishing on the mountainsides awaiting an onslaught by Mussolini’s Italy that never came.
Now they stand crumbling and abandoned, alien-looking structures gradually subsumed by the monumental landscape that surrounds them. A testament to both the resilience of the soldiers that once occupied them and the futility of trying to defend lines drawn on a map.
“Now they stand crumbling and abandoned, alien-looking structures gradually subsumed by the monumental landscape that surrounds them”
Max Leonard and Camille McMillan have published an award-winning book, Bunker Research, featuring essays alongside photographs and diagrams of these curious structures.
Taking in elements of history, archaeology, architecture, design and photography they invite the reader “on a disquieting journey up peaks, along ridges and down valleys, on their search for the hidden history of modernism in the mountains”. Join them.
Bunker Research by Max Leonard and Camille McMillan is available now.