In honour of #RemembranceDay2020 tomorrow, I'll be posting quick bios of most of the commonwealth #FWW photographers - beginning today with the Brits 🇬🇧 #thread#warphotos
Ernest Brooks (1876-1957) was Britain’s first official First World War photographer & got his start in the Dardanelles. He was brought on on a temporary basis so that the British Propaganda Bureau could decide whether having an official photographer was feasible.
There’s so much to say about Brooks - we (thankfully) do know quite a bit about him. He learned photography while working in the household of a wealthy woman whose daughters needed their film developed.
Brooks also worked as an official Royal photographer but was fired in the early 1920s after some unflattering photographs of the Royal Family surfaced - though his involvement is unclear.
John Warwick Brooke (1886-1929) joined Ernest Brooks on the Western Front around mid-July 1916, meaning he didn’t make it out in time for the first day of the Somme. He had worked at the Topical Press Agency before the war.
Brooke had been drawn from the rank and file, having enlisted in 1914. In March 1916 he was awarded a Distinguished Conduct Medal for repairing telephone cables under fire.
David McLellan (1886-?) worked at the Daily Mirror before the war, and was one of several correspondents the paper sent to the Balkans to document the events taking place there in 1912.
He joined the RFC in 1915 and was appointed as an official photographer in late 1917. After the war he was one of the early photography curators of the Imperial War Museum.
I never do this, but I don't have a credit for the below photograph. I snagged it from the Daily Mirror.
It's best not to play favourites, but McLellan is probably mine. I talk a lot about how he took the absolute weirdest #warphotos, and I think there's a case to be made to link him to surrealism before it even became a conscious art movement. But that's for another day.
The Brits were also photographed by Thomas Keith Aitken, Armando Console, and Harry Guy Bartholomew on the Western Front, and by Ariel Varges and the Grant brothers (Tom, Horace and Bernard) more in the outer theatres or non-infantry branches.
It's important to remember that the Royal Engineers ALSO did their fair share of photography in the absence of official photographers during battles like the opening day of the Somme.
Anyways, that's all for the Brits. We'll pick this up again later with the Canadians! 🇨🇦
Canada is now here! Check back again later for a look at the ANZACS.
Hi Everyone! I'd love for you all to participate in this #duffhistory poll. I had some trouble wording it quite the way I wanted it to, but essentially I'd love to know if you've seen any of the following photos online and been swayed by misinformation.
Go on, be honest 👇🏼
I paired it up with a super old pic of me holding a vintage camera, because we need to get some visibility and beat that algorithm, fam. Share away to your hearts content!
PLEASE NOTE: I have given all of the photos fake names. I know what the true provenance of most of the photos are, but I want to get people's genuine reactions to seeing them, rather than do my normal supply of accurate info sharing.
A new #warphotos thread to brighten up your Tuesday and you’re going to want to bookmark this one. What follows is a step-by-step guide on how to find Canadian official First World War photographs.
(Photograph is: Lt. Charles Hemming “Chas” Hastings, CWRO Records Officer, ca. 1916-1919, unattributed, LAC MIKAN 3216622).
If you cast your mind back to May 1919, you can almost picture Canadian official war photographer William Rider-Rider escorting big heavy crates of glass-plate negatives across the Atlantic to Canada.
One of the most iconic First World War photographs - Ivor Castle’s 'Over the Top' - turns 104 years old this month. Let’s explore the history of this extremely famous (yet misunderstood) photograph #thread#warphotos
(This #thread is derived from a talk I gave last year for Remembrance Day, but as we all know, this year looks a little different. Alas, the magic of the internet).
Over the Top, taken in October 1916, is actually a series of 4 photographs, and I’ve posted them all for you here (not sure why O-876, the final photograph in the series is digitized from a print, unlike O-873-875). These four belong to Library and Archives Canada.
Today marks the 76th anniversary of the funeral of Canadian Army Film and Photo Unit (CFPU) cameraman, James "Jimmy" Campbell. Learn more about Jimmy below 👇🏼
Jimmy was born in Belfast, Ireland, in 1906, but enlisted for the war from Vancouver. He had been working as a cameraman for Columbia Studios. Enlisting in Vancouver, he became a member of the @SeaforthOfC
The CFPU came together in 1941, and Jimmy was brought on as a cameraman. He later filmed in places like Sicily and Italy, and we see him here drinking wine with photographer Terry Rowe, an interpreter, and a local.
Who's ready for a #thread on the materiality of photographs!? If it sounds thrilling, it's because it is
I recently purchased the above photographic print on eBay. When we look at the image, we see a very memorable: "Battle of Pilckem Ridge. Stretcher bearers struggle in mud up to their knees to carry a wounded man to safety near Boesinghe," 1 August 1917, by Ernest Brooks.
However, when we look at the back (an essential, and honestly thrilling, pastime for all photo-historians) we see that this particular print was actually run in the Sunday Telegraph in 1966.