Lest we forget
To commemorate the centenary of the end of World War I, Amy Davies brings together a collection of photography-related features exploring different aspects of the conflict
To commemorate a century since the end of the First World War, we present a collection of features. First up, Richard van Emden’s book 1918
As many readers will no doubt be aware, 11 November 2018 marks the centenary of the First World War’s armistice. On the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month, a ceasefire to end the ‘war to end all wars’ was called. A hundred years on, we are still affected by the events of that period, a conflict that claimed the lives of over 16 million people.
Photography from that era is something that has also persistently resonated throughout that time. Over the next 10 pages, we’ll be looking at several different facets of First World War imagery.
Richard van Emden has written a series of books about the First World War. His newest publication, 1918, covers the final year of the war, and is illustrated by examples of private photography, letters and diary entries. It aims to encapsulate what life was really like for those serving on the front.
Van Emden spoke to us a few weeks before the book’s publication to tell us more about it. He explains, ‘It’s the year I said I wouldn’t do – that’s simply because in 1914, the British Army banned cameras on all operational fronts. So the number of cameras on the Western Front rapidly declined. Men were fed up of war, it had gone on for four years, and were highly sick of it.
‘I didn’t think I’d be able to do 1918 in private photographs. I really wanted to though. It’s a fascinating year because 1918 has a little bit of everything – you’ve got this great German offensive on the Western Front, which the British hadn’t seen since 1915. There was an incredible retreat from the battlefields of the Somme and Ypres and a re-advance at the end of the war, over countryside. There was also still trench warfare and bombardments. It was kind of the whole of the war encapsulated into one year, and that makes 1918 a fascinating year, and yet the least understood.
‘People are obsessed with events like The Battle of the Somme, and 1918 hadn’t really had the study and
the consideration that it deserved. I just had to go out there and work extraordinarily hard to find enough pictures to illustrate the book.’
Almost all the photographs in Richard’s books are from private collections – that is, they have not been taken by ‘official’ war photographers. There’s also both Allied and German photography; indeed this book features more German photography than any of van Emden’s previous publications. Unlike the British, the German Army offered no prohibition on private photography, so it’s sometimes easier to find – van Emden was also keen to convey a sense of shared experiences from both sides of the lines.
What is interesting, perhaps from a modern sensibility, is that, aside from the obvious differences in uniforms, no matter the nationality of the photographer, the images are very similar. ‘One of the fascinating things about private photography is that soldiers shared experiences. They had a fascination with their life in the trenches, they were very keen to photograph their mates and were keen to take pictures especially when they were “winning” – they would keep them almost like holiday snaps.’
A lot of the imagery in the book arguably shows the lighter side of war, but there are also examples which show the harsher realities of life – and death – in the trenches. ‘ There was a tendency for soldiers to photograph [the] enemy dead; maybe it’s a morbid fascination, or maybe it’s a
grim satisfaction that you feel that you’re winning.’ One particular image, which stands out from the rest, shows two dead British soldiers ( below). ‘ This guy has actually stopped, jumped into this trench with his camera out, in the middle of this maelstrom and took this extraordinary photograph – it’s one of the most incredible photographs I’ve ever seen.
‘I can only assume he calculated in his mind that he’s got 30 seconds where he’s not going to get killed. If there was a British soldier with a bayonet 10 feet away, he would not have taken that photograph. But he is in mortal danger, there’s no doubt about it, from shells and machinegun fire, that’s what makes it such a special image.
‘You can also analyse the picture – for example there’s a rifle jammed up on the left-hand side with two bullets in the breach. You can actually see these bullets in there, in the moment of fighting – the moment where he’s about to get killed, he’s panicked and jammed these cartridges into the rifle.’
To find photographs, van Emden uses a variety of sources but finds many of them via eBay, some of which are lucky or chance finds. ‘Weirdly the story for that [the photograph depicting two dead British soldiers], I was skiing in France but I’d jarred my back. Everyone else went up the slopes but I thought I’d give it an hour or so – during that time I started looking on eBay and I saw that image – it was a single photograph for £120. I thought it was amazing, but the price was outrageous. But the more I looked at it, the more I realised it was the most extraordinary picture, and really I was never going to see anything like that again. In the end it has proved to be of huge interest.’
Although van Emden says there are some fantastic official images, it’s the private collections which reveal the fuller picture. ‘Although official photographers are working all the time, the chances of them being anywhere at any one time when something really interesting is happening is slim. Whereas you’ve got hundreds, if not thousands of men with cameras, and they’re snapping whatever particularly appeals to them. The real difference is that you get named photographs. Official photographers never name the people. For other ranks, they were taking photographs of each other, their mates.
‘Also, the soldiers themselves react to the camera. Their reaction is very different to their mate than it would be to the official photographer, who was an officer. So, with other ranks, they feel a bit stiff. Trench photographs, the pictures taken by soldiers themselves, tell us so much more about what their lives meant to them, what they were interested in, what their fears were. You get amazing images that the official photographer couldn’t have got because he would never be in that position to take them.’
The photographs van Emden collected for this book provide a fascinating insight into the final year of the war. The year 1918 may not have the same resonance as some of the other, arguably more celebrated, periods, but as the centenary comes and goes, both historically and photographically, having a closer look at 1918 is certainly worthy of your time.