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HomeContentsThemes > First World War (1914-1918)

WARNING
Warning: The photographs within this theme and the sections on individual wars are of a graphic and violent nature - if you are sensitive to these issues then you should not view this theme.
 
Disclaimer: This section of the website uses examples from wars and rebellions to highlight the works of photographers - this is not to make a political point but to appreciate that there are different global perspectives on each event. If there is a general point it is about the inhumanity of war.
 
  
We are always interested in improving the content on this website so please get in contact if you have any suggestions...
 
  
Equipment improved and there were vast numbers of photographs taken during the First World War but it is strange that few photographers come to mind when writing about it. This is extraordinary given the scale of the action and the devastation wrought. The Australian photographer Frank Hurley (1885-1962) covered the battle of Ypres (1917) and he is credited incorrectly with taking the only color photographs of the First World War. In fact there were a number of other innovators to took quite stunning color photographs of which I was not aware until I started collecting research for this website.
1.   Photographs of the front
Amid the horrors of trench warfare some soldiers did manage to take photographs:
  • Henri Barbusse (1873-1935), author of 'Le Feu' (1916) that was published as 'Under Fire: Story of a Squad' in 1917 in the USA, took photographs at the front.
  • Josef Sudek (1896-1976) from Prague, who despite losing his arm when fired on by his own artillery during a charge, produced 3 albums of photographs. One of his pictures from 1916-7 shows four soldiers standing round a the base of a tree shattered by shell fire in an empty landscape.
  • André Kertész fought in the first World War and took photographs. During service with the Austro-Hungarian Army in the Balkans in 1914-1915, Kertesz photographed his comrades and their activities until he was severely wounded in battle and paralyzed for a year.
  • The Russian photographer Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii made true color pictures near the village of Karelia using three-colour separation system. Only two of his photographs are directly connected with the war.
French photographic competitions
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Lieutenant Laederich
The results of the 1915 photographic competition in the French newspaper "Le Miroir" 
1915
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The winning photographs for 1916 - the winner going to aerial photographs of the Forte de Douaumont. 
1916
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A 1918 newspaper announcement totalling prize money awarded up til then : 76,250 FF 
1918
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A French newspaper announcement with the rules for a monthly photographic competition of war photographs. 
n.d.
During the War French newspapers including "Le Miroir" and "Le Pays de France" mounted photographic competitions with substantial prizes - although these provided extraordinary shots of the front in ways that most reporters could not get they also provided large archives for the newspapers as they obtained the rights to publish any of the entries they received.
 
In one of the examples above from the French illustrated newspaper "Le Miroir" the winning entry for 1915 is shown - a quite remarkable picture showing a shell actually exploding surrounded by infantry.
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2.   Color photography
  • Hand colored photographs were widely used for postcards
  • The Paget Plate was invented in 1913 and a color effect was achieved by looking at a black-and-white positive through a raster of colored lines - Frank Hurley used this technique.
  • The Russian photographer Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii used digichromatography, an astonishing three-color separation system (one glass plate negative, three frames); a process based on the work of the German chemist and physicist Adolf Miethe (1862-1927). Mikhailovich travelled from 1905 until 1915 all over Russia and photographed prisoners-of-war, trains and landscapes.
  • Jean-Baptiste Tournassoud (1866-1951), photographed the front lines and in October 1918 was appointed Chief of the Photography and Cinematography Section of the French Army - he used the autochrome process to capture the everyday lifes of soldiers.
  • There were other notable French autochromists including Paul Castelnau, Fernand Cuville, Jules Gervais-Courtellemont (1863-1931), Léon Gimpel (1878-1948) and Albert Samama-Chikli.
French color photographs of the First World War (Autochromes)
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Jean-Baptiste Tournassoud
Alpine infantry soldiers camping (Chasseurs Alpins au bivouac) 
1914 (ca)
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Jean-Baptiste Tournassoud
Spahis soldiers eating their meals 
1915
  
The First World War was the first conflict to be recorded with color photographs - a lot of these were hand colored postcards with limited detail but there are a few of extraordinary quality.
 
Jean-Baptiste Tournassoud (1866-1951), Chief of the Photography and Cinematography Organization of the French Army, used the autochrome process which had been patented in France in 1907.
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Conclusions 
  
The strange thing about the First World War is that although there are hundreds of thousands of photographs taken, they were published in newspapers globally and a large number of multi-volume illustrated books - is that so few photographs are well known and the photographers are almost totally forgotten.
 
The reason for this may lie in the interests of the writers of the major histories of photography and the fact that they were not aware of the archives, or did not have time to study them. Was the scale of the horror so immense that single images undervalued the scale of the tragedy? The omission from photographic histories has led to the remarkable images that do exist being continually undervalued and ignored.
Color postcards of the battles at Verdun
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Jules Gervais-Courtellemont
Cover for a set of French color photographs of the battles for the forts at Verdun published by L'Edition Franþaise Illustrée, 30 Rue de Provence, Paris. They also published a series on the battlefields of the Marne. 
[1916à1917..., Les Champs de Bataille de Verdun!...] 
1916-1917
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Jules Gervais-Courtellemont
Birds eye view of the damage to the city of Verdun. This illustration was part of a set published by L'Edition Franþaise Illustrée, 30 Rue de Provence, Paris. 
[1916à1917..., Les Champs de Bataille de Verdun!...] 
1916-1917
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Jules Gervais-Courtellemont
Entitled La Victorie de Verdun this series of coloor photographs show grenades being thrown. This illustration was part of a set published by L'Edition Franþaise Illustrée, 30 Rue de Provence, Paris. 
[1916à1917..., Les Champs de Bataille de Verdun!...] 
1916-1917
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Jules Gervais-Courtellemont
Aerial of reconnaissance view of Fort de Vaux at Verdun. this illustration was part of a set published by L'Edition Franþaise Illustrée, 30 Rue de Provence, Paris. 
[1916à1917..., Les Champs de Bataille de Verdun!...] 
1916-1917
The French publisher L'Edition Francaise Illustree (30 Rue de Provence, Paris) issued sets of color photographs of the battles at Verdun and the Marne. The set shown here is the Verdun series - "1916…1917, Les Champs de Bataille de Verdun!... Photographies directes en Couleurs".
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