After my father died, my mother showed me his scrapbook from WWII, which I had never seen. Scanning his photos, I noticed the captions he had written on the back. It appeared these were images he had sent home to his family. In my series, “World War II Revisited,” I combine images from my father’s scrapbook with images I took at the sixtieth anniversary of the D-Day invasion in Normandy. The combination of his playful, innocent musings of daily life in basic training with the remnants and aftermath of battles creates a powerful statement of the harsh reality and the devastating loss of war.

Cynthia Bittenfield has shown work at the School of Visual Arts Gallery and Broadway Gallery, in New York, The Print Center in Philadelphia, Photography NOW 2010: Either/And, and Part 2: The New Docugraphics at The Center for Photography at Woodstock. Her work will be featured in The Art of Photography Show in San Diego. Her video work was included in Projecting Freedom: Cinematic Interpretations of the Haggadah screening in New York, London, and San Francisco. Bittenfield holds an MFA from the School of Visual Arts, where she also received a grant.