War is a Disaster, examines how a collective memory of war is maintained and reproduced within society through media, rituals and upbringing. For those without who’ve not lived through it, historical wars remain obscure events that challenge and defy imagination. Visual culture serves as a means of imagining and identifying with past conflict. It is no stretch to describe Finland, a country where over 70% of men in each age group receive formal military training and 84% of the public are willing to commit to armed struggle in the case of an invasion, a militarised society. As one of the final countries in Europe to hold on to a conscription-based military system, all male citizens in the nordic republic are legally obligated to a period of military service lasting between 6 to 12 months. Upholding this culture is an array of narratives, myths and trauma related to the Winter and Continuation Wars, which were fought between Finland and the Soviet Union from 1939-1944. Both wars ended in Finnish defeat, but are commemorated in national ceremonies as decisive moments that secured the independence of the Finnish state from Russia. Approaching these social questions through image-making and archival research, the project combines photographs I have made at memorial rituals and museums with historical propaganda images collected from the Finnish Army Image Archive and vernacular images selected from my private family albums. The project weaves these images together with an array of archival records, from war film pre-production documents and news media clippings to reports relating to my personal history and conscription service. A central theme in War is a Disaster, is the relationship between national memory and militarism. Historical consciousness becomes discernible in glimpses, such as the gestures of players in a war game spontaneously re-enacting death in combat, or in the sequence of photographs that a costume designer chooses to make on the set of his war film.