A meeting by accident during the mid 90ies on the battlefield of the Argonne forest formed the start of a more close collaboration between ourselves, Wim Degrande and Patrick Goossens. We knew eachother already through our membership of the Belgian WFA (Belgian Western Front Association, a historical association focusing on the history of the First World War).
After a few years intensily exploring  the Argonne forest, we started to research the region surrounding the Argonne, as well as other regions like St. Mihiel and other sectors in the region Lorraine.
During that time we also started focusing on the Vosges region in France, which has very well preserved battlefields with lots of unknown WW1 sites.
While exploring those former historical sites, the idea grew to photograph these forgotten places professionnally in black and white.
In combination with that fact, a research was started to find contemporary views (private purchase as well through archive work in Germany, France, England and Belgium), in order to give the explored sites a more historical interpretation value.
The combination of those two facts, actual b/w photographs and contemporary views gave the impulse to create a book.
We mainly wanted to stress on lesser known WW1 sites, which are about to vanish or have started to desintegrate and which are not protected by local or national administrations or programs.
But we also included some sites which do not match those sites, described above, but were included because of their historic and intrinsic value.

A selection of those sites is published in our book:
“Weathered Witness. Relics of the First World War”

The book is published by Davidsfonds/Leuven, in bi-language (Dutch and English).
The black and white photographs are printed in duotone.
Format 24x24 cm, 208 pages.

In combination with the publication of the book, a selection of our photographs could be seen in the exposition « Remembered and Forgotten » in the In Flanders Fields Museum at Ypres, Belgium.
This exposition ran from 7th July till 26th August 2007. One half of the exposition, “Remembered”, concentrated on the history of the British war cemeteries, showing photographs in colour. An organisation of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission...
The other part “Forgotten” showed a selection of our photographs, accompagnied by contemporary views and text.
The black and white photographs are the creation of Patrick Goossens, which has a long standing interest and experience in black and white photography, besides his passion for the history of World War One.
The historical research of the explored sites and the search for contemporary views is mainly the work of Wim Degrande. ..