Picturing the Western Front: Photography, practices and experiences in First World War France

By Beatriz Pichel

Between 1914 and 1918, military, press and amateur photographers produced thousands of pictures. Either classified in military archives specially created with this purpose in 1915, collected in personal albums or circulated in illustrated magazines, photographs were supposed to tell the story of the war. Picturing the Western Front argues that photographic practices also shaped combatants and civilians’ war experiences. Doing photography (taking pictures, posing for them, exhibiting, cataloguing and looking at them) allowed combatants and civilians to make sense of what they were living through. Photography mattered because it enabled combatants and civilians to record events, establish or reinforce bonds with one another, represent bodies, place people and events in imaginative geographies and making things visible, while making others, such as suicide, invisible. Photographic practices became, thus, frames of experience.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Manchester University Press
• Release date: May 18, 2021
• ISBN: 9781526151896

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Picturing the Western Front

Cultural History of Modern War

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Picturing the Western Front

Photography, practices and experiences in First World War France

Beatriz Pichel

MANCHESTER UNIVERSITY PRESS

Copyright © Beatriz Pichel 2021

The right of Beatriz Pichel to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

Published by Manchester University Press

Altrincham Street, Manchester M1 7JA

www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978 1 5261 5190 2 hardback

First published 2021

The publisher has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for any external or third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

Typeset by Newgen Publishing UK

To Borja, my favourite

A note on language

All translations from French to English were done by the author unless stated otherwise. If translated from primary sources, the original French version has been cited in the footnotes.

The names of all French institutions have been kept in their original form, with translations to English on their first occurrence.

Contents

List of figures

Acknowledgements

Introduction

1Recording: the photographic archive of the war

2Feeling: private, official and press photography as emotional practices

3Embodying: the multiple meanings of the body of the combatant, the mutilated and the dead

4Placing: broken trees, ruins, graves and the geographical imagination of France

5Making visible and invisible

Conclusions

List of primary sources

Bibliography

Index

Figures

0.1First page of Gérald and Berthe’s photographic album. ‘Notre voyage de noces. Souvenirs du 4 Septembre 1919’. Album 026139. Historial de la Grande Guerre, Péronne.

0.2Page depicting the ‘Saint Quentin’ attack. Saint Quentin. Album 026139. Historial de la Grande Guerre, Péronne.

1.1Photographer from the French military cinematographic service photographing an injured British man in November 1916. ‘Bois d’Aveluy, Novembre 1916. Opérateur de la section cinématographique de l’armée française photographiant un blessé britannique. CI British oficial photo (II.551)’. Album Valois 436. Collection La Contemporaine.

1.2SPA photographer and a military officer discussing instructions in March 1916. ‘Bornes frontières des trois pays, opérateur de la Section Photographique de l’armée, 15 Mars 1916’. Rechésy, n. 38,782. Album Valois 474. Collection La Contemporaine.

1.3German prisoners in a French camp. ‘Prisonniers’, SPA, 1917: La victoire prochaine du droit (Paris: E. Paul, 1917), p. 12. Bibliothèque nationale de France.

1.4Kodak Vest Pocket, author’s collection.

1.5SPA photographic classification room at the Palais Royal. ‘Section photographique de l’armée. Palais Royal, rue de Valois. Salle de classement des clichés’, Septembre 1916, Paris. N. 62,579, Z. 2319. Album Valois 382. Collection La Contemporaine.

2.1Page of the private album, showing a man holding two men, with a fourth one appearing from behind. ‘Un fort de la Halle’, Ambulance Album (Album 005634). Historial de la Grande Guerre, Péronne.

2.2Photograph of several men cooking. ‘On fait cuire les champignons (les cuisiniers sont en permission)’, Ambulance Album (Album 005634). Historial de la Grande Guerre, Péronne.

2.3Page showing two photographs of men posing with photographs in the candlelight. Album 5bis, Album Commandeur. Collection La Contemporaine.

2.4Three men ‘celebrating military promotions’. ‘On fête les nouveaux galons’, Ambulance Album (Album 005634). Historial de la Grande Guerre, Péronne.

2.5SPA photograph of the Spanish mission gathering in a military cemetery near the Calonne trench in Verdun. SPA 50 L 2436 ‘La mission se recueille dans un cimetière militaire, près de la tranchée de Calonne’. ECPAD.

2.6Page from Le Miroir. ‘L’exposition photographique française à Londres. L’inauguration de l’exposition photographique’. Le Miroir, 20 Août 1916. Bibliothèque nationale de France.

2.7SPA exhibition in Biarritz. SPA 31 X 1284 ‘Exposition à Biarritz’. ECPAD.

3.1SPA photographers with women and children in Port de l’Ouedj, 1917. SPA 17 CB 261d, Port de l’Ouedj, 1917. ECPAD.

3.2SPA photograph of two amputees, at work at the municipal school for amputees. ‘École municipale de mutilés, 5 rue de la Durance. Atelier de menuiserie amputés munis d’un bras artificiel au travail’, 29 Avril 1916. Album 387. Collection La Contemporaine.

3.3Page depiciting the health stages of injured men. ‘Plate XVIII. Les étapes du blessé’, SPA, La guerre (Paris: Armand Colin, 1916), p. 104. Bibliothèque nationale de France.

3.4Photographs showing the evolution of the injuries and facial reconstruction of Cecillon. ‘Cecillon’, Musée du Service de santé des armées, Val-de-Grâce, Paris.

3.5SPA photograph showing two men walking past the body of a French soldier. SPA 42L 2075 ‘Sur la route de Verdun à Douaumont’. ECPAD.

3.6SPA photograph, ‘On the road to Verdun, the bombed ground and corpses’. ‘Fort de Douaumont (près et au S) Sur la route de Verdun, le terrain bombardé et cadavres’. 20 Février 1917. Album Valois 195. Collection La Contemporaine.

3.7Photographs showing ‘A destroyed Zeppelin in Compiegne’ with a censored image in the middle. ‘Un Zeppelin abattu à Compiegne’, Sur le Vif, 17 Avril 1917, p. 4. Bibliothèque nationale de France.

3.8‘Burial of a soldier’. ‘Enterrement d’un soldat’, SPA, Recueil. Documents de la Section photographique de l’armee francaise 1914–16, Album 1. (Paris: A. Serment, 1916). Bibliothèque nationale de France.

3.9Photograph depicting German prisoners drinking from a barrel. ‘Dans un champ de prisonniers’, SPA, 1917: Du langage de la renommé et de la photographie (Paris: Émile Paul, 1917), p. 8. Bibliothèque nationale de France.

3.10Page depicting a mine attack on German trenches. Images 12, 13 and 14, ‘Leur morts’. Album 1 La guerre de mines, Album commandeur, Collection La Contemporaine.

3.11French bodies, captioned ‘Our dead’. Images 1, 2 and 3, ‘Nos morts’. Album 1 La guerre de mines, Album commandeur. Collection La Contemporaine.

4.1‘Injuries to the land of France – an apple orchard at Champien, Somme’, SPA, 1917: La France d’aujourd-hui (Paris: E. Paul, 1917), p. 12. Bibliothèque nationale de France.

4.2Page dedicated to the desctruction of the French city Péronne. ‘À Péronne–At Péronne–Em Péronne–En Péronne–In Péronne’, SPA, 1917: Le monde avec la France pour la liberté (Paris: E. Paul, 1917), p. 7. Bibliothèque nationale de France.

4.3Front cover. SPA, En territoire reconquis. Ce qu’ils ont fait (Paris: Section photographique et cinématographique de l’armée, 1917). Bibliothèque nationale de France.

4.4Photograph of Coucy le Chateau in ruins. ‘Coucy le Chateau, les ruines de la ville’, SPA, En territoire reconquis. Ce qu’ils ont fait (Paris: Section photographique et cinématographique de l’armée, 1917). Bibliothèque nationale de France.

4.5Image of a cut-down tree captioned ‘Spring-tide and war’. ‘Printemps de guerre’, SPA, 1917: La victoire prochaine du droit (Paris: E. Paul, 1917), p. 9. Bibliothèque nationale de France.

4.6Several broken trees surrounding the upper body of a crucified Christ. ‘Au bord de la route’, SPA, 1917: La victoire prochaine du droit (Paris: E. Paul, 1917), p. 21. Bibliothèque nationale de France.

4.7Photograph of several men in the trenches with destroyed trees in the background. SPA 49 L 2398. ECPAD.

4.8Self-portrait of SPA photographer Albert Samama-Chikli in Verdun. SPA 49 L 2249. ECPAD.

4.9A soldier sitting in a hole in the wall. Image 21. Album 3 Villages ruinés, Album commandeur. Collection La Contemporaine.

4.10Photography in the mine tunnels. Album 1 La guerre des mines, Album Commandeur. Collection La Contemporaine.

4.11‘From an aeroplane’, SPA, 1917: Le sang n’est pas de l’eau (Paris: E. Paul, 1917), p. 28. Bibliothèque nationale de France.

4.12Photograph of a tomb near the ruins. ‘Ferme de Léomont, 26 Avril 1917. Tombes près des ruines’, Album Valois 528. Collection La Contemporaine.

4.13Soldier’s graves. ‘Ferme de Léomont, 26 Avril 1917. Tombes de soldats’, Album Valois 528. Collection La Contemporaine.

4.14Several mean digging the tombs of a military cemetery. ‘Verdun, Cimetière de soldats. 11 Décembre 1915. 63.342, Meuse’, cf. Capitain Moreau. Album Valois 528. Collection La Contemporaine.

4.15Photograph of the crematory oven. ‘Le four crématoire’, Ambulance Album 005634. Historial de la Grande Guerre, Péronne.

5.1‘First series of the glorious war missing’. ‘Premier série des glorieux disparus de la guerre’, Sur le Vif, 14 Novembre 1914. Bibliothèque Nationale de France.

5.2‘8th series, war missing portraits’. ‘8ème série, portraits des disparus’, Sur le Vif, 2 Janvier 1915. Bibliothèque Nationale de France.

5.3Photographs of a colonial solider suffering from ‘pithiatic emotional discordance’. ‘Discordance émotionelle pithiatique’. Porot, ‘Le problème des fonctionnels et les solutions militaires qu’il comporte’. Musée du Service de santé des armées, Val-de-Grâce, Paris.

Acknowledgements

I became a historian of photography by accident. Way back in December 2007, I was starting my research and Javier Ordóñez asked me: ‘why don’t you look at photographs?’ I, a philosophy and history of science graduate with no previous knowledge or interest in photography, foolishly said: ‘okay!’ When I came back to Paris, where I was spending the year, I made an appointment at the Bibliothèque de Documentation Internationale Contemporaine (now La Contemporaine) to look at their First World War photographic collection. Being in the archive, opening drawers full of pictures and handling albums made by veterans and nurses almost a century before was like nothing I had ever experienced in my academic life. By the end of that project, it was clear that photographic history was my thing. I will always be grateful to Javier for opening that door for me, as well as for always encouraging and supporting me ever since we first met in 2003.

This book is the product of the years I have spent at the Photographic History Research Centre (PHRC, De Montfort University). Elizabeth Edwards is not only the most influential thinker in photographic history alive, but also one of the most generous scholars I have ever met. Having her as a mentor between 2014 and 2016 changed my career and made me a better scholar. I could say the same about Kelley Wilder. Her mentorship and friendship have been invaluable while I was writing this book, as I asked her for advice or cried in her office far too many times – I wish everyone had a Kelley in their life. Gil Pasternak and Jenifer Chao (my teaching partner in crime) have also been genuinely excellent, inspiring colleagues, always providing support, intelligent remarks and good laughs.

My colleagues in the History department have been a constant source of support. I am extremely lucky to be friends with Heather Dichter, who has read chapters, corrected my English, given me feedback and provided both literal and metaphorical food for thought. Sophie Brockmann also read some chapters and, most importantly, has kept me sane during the final year of this book. Panikos Panayi read an early version of the introduction and his support meant (and still means) a lot. Special thanks go to my ‘Photography and Conflict’ students over the years for allowing me the privilege to discuss many of the ideas of this book with them.

I would also like to thank my academic friends and colleagues who have endured with me the writing of this book. María González Aguado has taught me everything I know about STS and is always there for me. Leticia Fernández Fontecha always has the right words to make me think and feel better. Many of the ideas in Chapter 2 were developed while I was co-editing the collective volume Emotional Bodies with Dolores Martín-Moruno, and I owe to our many conversations my thinking about emotions. Katherine Rawling, Harriet Palfreyman, Jennifer Wallis, Rebecca Wynter and Stef Eastoe are brilliant historians who inspire me every day. Tracey Loughran gave me key writing advice and is a feminist hero all around. Thanks to all my Twitter friends for cheering me up with hilarious gifs and supporting me when I shared my struggles writing this book (Academic Twitter can be a really nice place).

The team at Manchester University Press has been an excellent partner in the publishing process, and their patience and support have enabled me to finish this book. The manuscript is better as a result of the feedback from the series editors and anonymous reviewers who have read chapters at different stages, and I greatly appreciate their time and comments. Special thanks to David Lashley, a brilliant proofreader and friend, for his work in early drafts and Lou Harvey, who proofread the final manuscript in the midst of the Covid-19 crisis. I would like to thank the personnel at the Établissement de Communication et de Production Audiovisuelle de la Défense, La Contemporaine, Historial de la Grande Guerre, Bibliothèque Nationale de France and Musée du Services de Santé des armés Val-de-Grâce for their support while I was doing research in their archives, and for allowing me to use their images. With support from the Institute of Arts and Design and VC2020 funding at De Montfort University I have been able to publish a heavily illustrated book.

I am incredibly fortunate to have family and friends who have constantly supported me. I have danced my cares away with my Leicester friends, and every time I see my friends in Madrid it is like glitter is exploding inside me. My late grandmother, la yaya, passed away aged 102 as I was finishing this book, and I want to thank her for always believing in me, no matter what. My sister Ana, always laughing and never planning, helps me not to take myself too seriously. I count the days to see my nieces, Ari and Zoe, who amaze me every time with their intelligence, kindness and spark. Millones de gracias a mis padres, Jesús y Margarita, por todo lo que han hecho y siguen haciendo por mí. Finally, thanks from the bottom of my heart to my (civil) partner Borja for being my rock and making everything better.

Introduction

For their first wedding anniversary, the First World War veteran Gérald Debaecker offered to his wife, Berthe, a photographic album (Figure 0.1).¹ Like many other couples, they had gathered photographs of their wedding and honeymoon, as well as professional images of the places they had visited. What sets this album apart is that Gérald and Berthe’s honeymoon mirrored his war experience along the Western Front between 1914 and 1918. They departed from Mont Saint Michel, in Northern France, and continued their trip stopping at the places in which Gérald had fought, including war landmarks such as Yser, Nieuwpoort, Brussels and Diksmuide.² In the pages belonging to these cities, Gérald also included portraits of him during the war. In this way, images of Berthe at the seaside or with a bicycle interspersed with photographs of him in uniform and pictures of the cities they visited. The honeymoon album intertwines, therefore, several narratives, mainly the husband’s experience of the war and the couple’s experience of the honeymoon. In so doing, the album shows not only the complex process of demobilisation that followed the Armistice, but also the intricate ways in which combatants and civilians made use of photography to tell their war stories.

Figure 0.1 First page of Gérald and Berthe’s photographic album, showing pictures of their wedding, 4 September 1919.

A particularly important episode in the album is the visit to Saint Quentin, where Gérald had received a facial injury. As usual, the two pages dedicated to this event include both photographs of Gérald during the war and images of the couple. Yet, unlike the rest of the album, the honeymoon photographs show the couple almost re-enacting the event. They are not simply visiting the place but fully recreating the moment when shrapnel impacted on Gérald’s face and he had to run to the aid station. For instance, he bends down next to the bushes ‘behind which I was sheltered for a few minutes’, as if he were hiding again. Meanwhile, Berthe poses in her dress and heels next to the place where Gérald ‘was heading to when I was injured in the face’. Other images represent the ‘shell hole where I found myself, probably when I received the shrapnel in the jaw’, ‘Berthe on the railway embankment that I followed to go behind enemy lines’ and ‘the entrance to the aid station’ (Figure 0.2).³

Figure 0.2 Page depicting the ‘Saint Quentin’ attack. The photographs taken during the honeymoon recreating the attack are the smaller photographs surrounding the portrait of Gérald in military uniform and the image of the landscape of the forest.

As exceptional as this album is, it nonetheless provides an excellent example of how photographs helped to document and represent people and places. Photography had an active role in the construction of war and post-war narratives. In the case of the honeymoon album, having a camera meant that the couple could take new images of the battlefield of Saint Quentin, and more importantly, reconstruct the attack. By exchanging the roles of photographer and photographed, Gérald made Berthe an active part of his war experience and his demobilisation process.⁴ The album was intended as a private object (some captions simply read ‘you …’ and ‘me!’), yet the war experience articulated in the album is not merely individual. It also integrated public narratives such as the final page’s homage to the Soldat Inconnu buried at the Arc de Triomphe in Paris. The story of Gérald during the war (where he fought, his regiment, his injury) intermingles with the story of the first days of the newly married couple (hiring a car, visiting places and enjoying the seaside) and the history of the war (shown in before and after photographs of landmarks). Such complexity could not have been achieved solely by travelling along the Western Front. What interwove the multiple stories and allowed Gérald to share his war experience was the practice of photography: photographing and posing for the camera in the fields, as well as collecting and arranging photographs in the album.

This book places photographic practices at the centre of the historical analysis of the war experiences of combatants and civilians. Authors such as Leonard V. Smith, Michael Roper and Stéphane Audoin-Rouzeau among many others have examined how narratives constructed and mediated war experiences and identities.⁵ Dealing with a similar problem, this book shifts the focus away from written accounts to examine how photography articulated war experiences. The systematic analysis of the photographic production of the military photographic service Section photographique de l’armée (SPA), private albums and the French illustrated press brings into light how practices such as taking, exchanging and looking at photographs mediated and shaped daily life under the new war conditions.

With this aim, this book examines photography beyond representations.⁶ As the wedding album shows, photography is primarily a doing: a set of actions such as operating a camera, posing, collecting, purchasing, captioning, cropping, curating and arranging photographs, which always have particular effects. For instance, some private albums channelled grief, while official publications mobilised civilians’ emotions, particularly hatred against the Germans and pride for the French troops. Picturing the Western Front argues that photography engaged photographers, photographed subjects and viewers in particular relations by means of the practices of recording, feeling, embodying, placing and making war events visible and invisible. These practices, which correspond with the five chapters of the book, became frames through which combatants and civilians structured collective war experiences.

The great photographic war

The First World War saw an exponential increase in the number of photographs produced both in the home front and the front lines. This was particularly true for France, which had heavily invested in the development and dissemination of photography since 1839, when François Arago announced the daguerreotype, created by Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre and Joseph Nicéphore Nièpce, at the Académie des sciences.⁷ The daguerreotype was not the only photographic method available in 1839 (Henry Fox Talbot invented his own photographic process, the calotype, at the same time), and by the 1860s it was largely in disuse. Yet, the early support of the French state towards photography by making the patent of the daguerreotype public meant that photography flourished in the second half of the nineteenth century. The rapid multiplication of photographic studios in Paris, the creation of the Société Française de la Photographie in 1854 and the organisation of universal exhibitions in which photography had a prominent role fostered a growing community of photographers who shared and discussed techniques, ideas and aesthetic conventions.⁸

Photographs also became common currency in conflicts. One of the first photographers to document a battlefield was Roger Fenton, who accompanied the British troops during the Crimean War (1853–1856). Commissioned by the Manchester publisher and arts dealer Thomas Agnew & Sons, Fenton mainly produced group portraits and views of the war landscape such as the famous ‘Valley of the Shadow of Death’. His were not the first photographs taken in a conflict, but the publication of Fenton’s images in the press in the form of illustrations gained him worldwide recognition.⁹ Since then, photographers have been present in conflicts such as the American Civil War (1861–1865), the Franco-Prussian War (1870) and the Sino-Japanese War (1904–1905).¹⁰ Improvements in photomechanical printing such as the development of the halftone process in the 1880s and the multiplication of illustrated magazines meant that, by the beginning of the twentieth century, the public had become familiar with war images.¹¹

A market in France therefore existed by 1914 ready to consume and produce photographs. French companies such as Gaumont, Pathé Frères, Lumière & Jougla, Éclair and Guilleminot manufactured photographic equipment such as cameras, glass plates, film, stereoscopic visors, projectors and enlargement devices used by both professional and amateur photographers. Foreign cameras such as the German Goertz were also very popular in the early 1900s, but the outbreak of war and ensuing trade restrictions favoured the consumption of national products such as the Gaumont Spido or the Vérascope Richard. The Spido was a medium-large camera that could hold up to 12 glass plates (up to 18 in the case of small format plates) and weighed 1.5kg.¹² It could be used without a tripod, but travelling with the whole equipment was cumbersome. The Vérascope, also advertised in the French press during the war, was a stereoscopic device with two lenses. Slightly smaller and lighter than the Spido, the Vérascope took 12 stereoscopic or 24 single images.¹³ Other devices, such as the Citoscope, could even be used to take either still or moving images, as they worked with both glass plates and film.¹⁴ While these cameras were aimed at professionals as well as amateurs, it was the development of small, portable and affordable cameras such as the Kodak Brownie Box (1900) and the Kodak Vest Pocket (1913) that had encouraged many people to become amateur photographers before the war. Aware of this trend, Kodak started to promote its Vest Pocket as the perfect gift for the soldier in 1915.¹⁵ Press advertisements introduced ‘Le Kodak du soldat’ (the soldier’s Kodak) as a key gadget in wartime, claiming that ‘when your sons and grandsons ask you about the role you played during the Great War, you will be able to open your Kodak album and tell them the exciting story of each page’.¹⁶

In parallel, the illustrated press grew over the war years, and the government invested in their own photographic service. Illustrated journals such as L’Illustration and Le Miroir adapted their previous style to the conflict, while others such as J’ai Vu and Sur le Vif were created precisely to document the war. These journals were cheap (J’ai Vu cost 0.25 francs, while Sur le Vif was sold for 0.15 francs) and addressed mainly women and non-mobilised men. Photographs came from press correspondents and military photographers, as well as from readers who contributed with their own images to Le Miroir and J’ai Vu. As a means of counteracting and controlling the