Oorlogs(ge)zichten (War Faces) isn’t the next clichéd exhibition about the atrocities of a war so horrific that, though it ended 91 years ago, still affects Flanders today. At the entrance to the exhibition: cold facts written on the wall (9.4 million cut down in battle, 6 million mutilated), information about the subjects in the photographs (“André Blum, seriously injured by a shell fragment”), heart-breaking letters from dying soldiers to their loved ones. No extensive texts or conquering heroes – just thoughtfully chosen objects, documents, pictures and harrowing facts.

Before the idea of an exhibition even occurred to her, Cornet had already taken many pictures of gas masks in the armed forces museum. “The collection of masks shows the horrible reality behind the first chemical and biological warfare in world history,” she explains. “These objects are mute witnesses to unspeakable fear and suffering.”

On another occasion, she photographed moulds of gas masks made in Belgium’s oldest plaster cast studio at Brussels’ Jubelpark – just because she felt attracted to them. And one day while browsing through a pile of old magazines in a Brussels’ bookshop, her eye fell on a picture of soldiers in a copy of the French newsweekly L'Illustration from 1916.

One of the most prestigious periodicals reporting on the First World War, L’Illustration took part in the mass propaganda churned out to influence public opinion. “Those young soldiers posed for these pictures – all dressed up in their military uniforms – as quiet heroes. But the photo captions witness the real story: they were shell-shocked survivors of an ongoing war, with amputated limbs and smashed bodies.”

Back home, the artist projected those images on her wall, took pictures of them and mingled them with the pictures she took earlier of the gas masks and the plaster casts. The result is a series of images that focuses on individual suffering rather than presenting people with statistics of massive numbers of casualties often too huge to comprehend or digest.

Cornet is a fan of the Royal Museum of the Armed Forces, which she calls an “old-school, a bit dusty, but solid museum”. She’s also fond of Jubelpark, where the museum is located. “It radiates the faded glory of a long-gone Brussels, like what Jacques Brel sang about.”

The 36-year-old says she feels “nostalgic” when it comes to Brussels. “I can’t stand the unpleasant sight of this once magnificent city that has been neglected for too long. I don’t want to be confronted with the scars of my city; that’s why I only very seldom come to the city centre.”

There is a certain denial to confront pain and loss in Oorlogs(ge)zichten, as well. “The Armed Forces Museum can’t show the real effects of a war since the public doesn’t want to be confronted with the real horror, with shocking pictures of suffering. Since my pictures are poetic, this suffering isn’t unbearable to look at. The public won’t be shocked or run away.”

Cornet has been intrigued by the First World War since she was a little girl. Her great-grandfather was killed at the front, causing her grandmother to move from Paris to Brussels. But she also has a very intrinsic interest in this war, which began as a conflict that was expected to be short-lived.

“It was the first time in history that millions of soldiers fought against industrial war machines and suffered from previously unknown injuries provoked by biological and chemical weapons. All this has evoked untold suffering on a very large scale – a humanistic catastrophe that still moves people from all over the world. I try to show this universal suffering in my work.”

It’s a pity that Oorlogs(ge)zichten is staged at the back of the museum. In this hangar full of glimmering fighter planes, impressive uniforms, proud flags and frightening weaponry, there’s room for many more exhibitions that show the human reality behind war.

Until 20 September

Royal Museum of the Armed Forces

Jubelpark 3, Brussels

➟ www.klm-mra.be