Ana Paganini's '200 Summers Later' Reimagines Historic Battles Through Photography

Photographer Ana Paganini has spent recent summers documenting historical battle reenactments, creating an archive for events that predate photography. Her project, '200 Summers Later,' was inspired by the Stanley Kubrick archive at London College of Communication, where she discovered that Kubrick's 'Barry Lyndon' was based on etchings rather than photographs. Paganini's work captures the bloodless beauty of reenactments, including the 210th anniversary of the Battle of Waterloo, where she photographed Mark Schneider's final portrayal of Napoleon. The series involved navigating strict reenactment rules, such as being barred from the battlefield at Waterloo but allowed at Vimeiro if dressed as a 19th-century civilian. Paganini used a Hasselblad camera with 120mm film, and Martin Parr advised her to include modern elements like a double-decker coach to create a 'glitch in time.' The project also holds personal significance, as her grandfather possessed a military jacket of General Beresford, connecting her to the Portuguese Napoleonic Battles. Paganini's work explores the intersection of life and death, memory and history, and will be exhibited in 2026.