Thread by @CarlaJeanStokes

Photograph taken by Ivor Castle, September 1916, O-758. This photograph was taken close to the same time as Castle's series Over the Top 👇🏻👇🏻

https://twitter.com/ThisDayInWWI/status/1397376901912547328

It's not super weird that the NY Tribune published it nearly 2 years later. The New York Times' Midweek Pictorial also published photographs a little later than when they were taken (not always this late though).

An essay on the NYT photographs is on my long to-do list.

The research for it was, get this, FUNDED! Thanks @RICgallery, you are amazing.

Given Castle's propensity to create composite photographs - and due to the fact that he was NOT required to identify them - we might question if this is one such composite.

It honestly might be one. The rigid horizon line is pretty perfect for changing out the background and adding in a big shell burst.

Castle pretty much always created his composites for the exhibition wall. And this photograph was, in fact, exhibited. It was on view at Grafton Galleries during the December 1916 exhibition of official war photos.

Sometimes it's helpful to check out the same version of a photograph in the CWM collection. Often, they'll have prints made from original negs while LAC will have digi versions of Castle's composites.

No luck in this case!

So if we really wanted to know if it was a composite, we'd have to go check out the original negatives, which are currently sitting in storage at LAC's Gatineau Preservation Centre.

Original objects is always the gold standard of photography research.

Soo, how many composites did Castle create? Well, historians don't know the answer to that question.

But if you're just dying to learn more about at least some of them, it's pretty much the entire basis of my forthcoming book, so get pumped!