Faces of the First World War stemmed from a realisation that 60,500 British servicemen sustained facial injuries between 1914-1918 but, unlike their counterparts in France and Germany, in Britain we rarely see or hear about them. 
 
British remembrance of the First World War overwhelmingly focuses on the dead rather than the wounded and disabled, and when the story of these men is told - like so many disability histories - it is frequently medicalised.
It is the surgeons and operations performed which are highlighted, rather than the men who underwent them.
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Moreover, this culture of looking away is nothing new. In their own time, men with facial injuries were hidden from public view and talked about in ways which dehumanised and objectified them.
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This exhibition aims to change these narratives. 
 
Moving beyond the role of the medical team, Faces of the First World War asks instead what were the experiences of the servicemen who sustained and lived with facial injuries? How did they feel towards their faces? And what role did they play in their own recovery?​

Faces of the First World War hopes to give these men the voice and profile they have so often been denied.​​