D-Day Revisited Secretary & Treasurer, Victoria Phipps, also works as a professional photographer specialising in portraiture, lifestyle and travel photography. Since co-founding the charity with her father over 10 years ago, Victoria has travelled to France every year for the D-Day anniversary commemorations and is often seen with a Normandy Veteran on one arm and a camera on the other!
Every year Victoria strives to record the moments and faces which make each trip unique, building a collection of over 500 digital photographs from each anniversary. All of these photographs are shared with the veterans who attended and their families, and highlights are published here on our website and in our social media for all to see.
To commemorate the 70th anniversary of D-Day, Victoria decided to begin capturing individual portraits of Normandy Veterans on medium format film. Ahead of the 2014 trip to France, she asked veterans to bring along a printed photograph taken of them during the Second World War. Victoria then proceeded to make a collection of portraits of veterans in their blazer and medals holding this photograph of their younger selves; fresh-faced, full of energy and ready to serve their country. She made no attempt to change the expression of the subject and so each is a reflection of how they felt at that moment in Normandy. This style of portrait attempted to bridge the 70+ years since these men & women fought so intensely to defend the freedoms we all enjoy today.
The resulting photographs were much appreciated by the veterans and their families. So each year since, as new people join our group, Victoria has added a few more to the series. She is honoured that several families have chosen to use these portraits on the Orders of Service for the funerals of their loved one.
We like to think of ourselves as one big D-Day Revisited family and so the inevitable loss of veterans we have come to call friends has been difficult for everyone involved with the charity. These beautiful portraits serve as a wonderful record of each veteran who has travelled back to Normandy with D-Day Revisited since 2014. Victoria hopes to reach 75 portraits ahead of the 75th anniversary in June 2019.