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Who was Lee Miller? The model-turned-war correspondent who photographed WW2 horrors
The biopic Lee, starring Kate Winslet, tells the story of the revered war photographer Lee Miller, exploring her unique lens and unyielding pursuit of truth of the human cost of the Second World War. We spoke to the film’s director, Ellen Kuras, about what makes Miller and her work so vital…
In a career that went from gracing the cover of Vogue to capturing the horrors of war zones and Nazi death camps, Lee Miller is remembered for defying expectations at every turn. Once a model, muse and photographer for the surrealist art movement in France, the American blazed a trail as a fearless war correspondent during the Second World War. She used her camera, and surrealist compositions, to create some of the most striking images of the conflict as well as document some of the 20th century’s most harrowing moments. Now, Miller’s wartime work and staggering photographic archive is the subject of the biopic Lee, starring Kate Winslet in the titular role. We caught up with Ellen Kuras, making her feature directorial debut, to learn more about the real Lee Miller and the challenges of portraying her life on film. Who was Lee Miller? Born in 1907 in Poughkeepsie, New York, Elizabeth ‘Lee’ Miller received an early education in photography from her father, Theodore, who. He taught her the rudiments and used her as a model for his work. In her teens, she developed an interest in theatre – studying lighting, costume and set design in Paris, then joined an experimental theatre group in Vassar College, New York – before she was spotted on the streets of Manhattan as a prospective model. Miller’s big break was due to a near-death experience, when the famed publisher Condé Nast stopped her from being hit by a car. He offered her a job and soon the 19-year-old beauty was on the cover of American and British Vogue. Read more | 10 photographs that made history By 1929, Miller had moved back to Paris, where she became the muse, collaborator and lover of the American surrealist artist and photographer Man Ray. Her modelling soon gave way to a burgeoning talent behind the camera, and it was in these years that she experimented and cultivated the techniques that would define her later work. Surrealism played a key role in her photography, even as she transitioned from fashion photography to war reporting. Lee director Ellen Kuras emphasises the importance of Miller's artistic background in shaping her views of the world. Miller “understood metaphor and the irony of what she was seeing,” explains Kuras. “Not only the literal of what was happening, but also the figurative, and what the meaning was.” Lee Miller in WW2 By the outbreak of the Second World War, Miller was living in London. The last few years had been spent moving around (between Paris, New York and Cairo, where she lived with her first husband). By 1939, she was in a passionate relationship with the British surrealist artist Roland Penrose and was launching her career as a photojournalist. In London, she documented the Blitz for British Vogue. This marked a dramatic shift from her previous work but, as Kuras notes, Miller "wanted to show people what was really happening". A determination to photograph the truth became her driving force. “She was, by that time, a middle-aged woman picking up a camera, donning her fatigues and just charging out into the middle of war to go and take photographs,” says Kuras. “She was a very unusual kind of person who wouldn't let the conventions of the day keep her back. She was always trying to find a way to get to where she wanted to go.” A month and a half after D-Day, Miller was in war-torn France following the 83rd Infantry Division of the US Army. Documenting women’s wartime lives Miller's approach to war photography was unconventional, as Kuras points out: "She was not taking a classical view of combat photography." While other correspondents focused on battles and military operations, Miller was interested in the human stories. She wanted to document the experiences of civilians, particularly women, whose lives were upended by the conflict. “She chose to see the war through a different lens,” says Kuras. In Lee, there is a scene when Miller photographs French women accused of collaborating with the Nazis; in many cases, such women were rounded up, often with no legal process, and had their heads shaved in a punishment intended to humiliate and shame. The real Miller wrote in 1944: “In Rennes today I went to a chastisement of French collaborators – the girls had had their hair shaved although the interrogation had merely confirmed that there was evidence enough for their trial later on. They were stupid little girls – not intelligent enough to feel ashamed.” As Miller raced ahead to get a picture of the suspected collaborators as they were paraded down the street, her uniform led some in the crowd to think that she herself had apprehended the women. “I was kissed and congratulated,” she wrote, “while the victims were spat on and slapped.” Photographing the Holocaust As the Allies advanced across Europe, Miller moved closer to the frontlines. Through her camera, she saw the liberation of Paris and the horrors of the concentration camps in Germany. Her work from this period is among her most famous, providing stark and unflinching evidence of the atrocities of the Holocaust. Miller’s experience at Dachau in April 1945 had a particularly profound impact on her. The images she captured there revealed the extent of the suffering and devastation inside the camp. She sent them to British Vogue for publication, vehement that this evil be seen by the world. Yet arguably the most iconic moment in Miller's career came a short time after her experiences at the death camp: when she entered the Munich apartment belonging to Adolf Hitler and famously took a bath in his tub. The photograph – taken by her friend and war correspondent for Life, David E Scherman – shows Miller seated in the bathtub, her face expressionless and hair damp, as if fresh from washing. Her boots, covered in the mud from Dachau, are on the Führer’s bathmat. Behind her rests a portrait of Hitler. The image, which was taken on the same day that Hitler committed suicide in his Berlin bunker, has since become one of the defining images of the war, and a symbol of the fall of the Nazi regime. Miller "was very aware of what she was doing" when she staged the photograph, says Kuras, in creating a powerful juxtaposition between the ordinary domestic setting and the unimaginable horrors she had just witnessed. The dirt-stained bathmat contrasts with the sterile luxury of the room. For Miller, it was not just a personal display of defiance against the fallen Hitler, but a deliberate act. "She wanted to make a story of this moment,” says Kuras. What happened to Lee Miller after the war? Despite her successes as a war correspondent, Miller struggled in the following years. The emotional toll of what she witnessed, combined with the frustration of seeing some of her most important photographs go unpublished, caused a deep disillusionment. British Vogue refused to run some of Miller's photographs, especially those taken in the concentration camps. The magazine, under the editorship of Audrey Withers, had supported Miller's wartime work, but these graphic photographs were deemed too shocking for the readers – of a fashion magazine, no less, which typically went for a more aspirational tone. The tension between Miller’s hopes for her work and the choices of the publications she works for, are central to the movie Lee. Kuras believes the censorship of Miller’s work – which she describes as a “a knife in her side” – contributed to her mental health struggles; today, she would be diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Read more | 100 women who changed the world While British Vogue remained reluctant, American Vogue would publish Miller’s images, running them alongside her firsthand accounts and providing an unflinching portrayal of the horrors she witnessed. The headline was “Believe it”. In 1947, Miller married Roland Penrose, gave birth to a son named Antony, and settled at Farley Farm House in Sussex. This became something of a gathering place for artists and intellectuals, such as Pablo Picasso and Joan Miró, and Miller took up cooking in order to treat her esteemed guests to lavish dinner parties. Yet despite her continued involvement in the art world, Miller's postwar years were marked by depression and an eventual retreat from public life. She struggled with alcoholism and lingering trauma, before dying in 1977 of cancer. She was 70. The legacy of Lee Miller’s photography Miller’s work could easily have been forgotten and lost, were it not for her son. While sorting through his mother’s belongings following her death, Antony Penrose uncovered tens of thousands of photographs and negatives, as well as writings that revealed the extent of her contributions as a war correspondent. Until then, Penrose had next to no knowledge of his mother's career as she had put her photography aside after the war and rarely spoke of her experiences. His discovery, however, ensured that Miller’s career would be preserved, culminating in books and exhibitions of her work and the founding of the Lee Miller Archives. Penrose himself has published several books about his mother, including Lee Miller’s War, which offers a comprehensive look at her wartime photography and writings. Kuras’s movie Lee is the latest effort to bring Miller’s extraordinary story to a new generation. Her images from the Second World War remain powerful visual records of a conflict that reshaped the world in the 20th century. Miller "was a very progressive, contemporary woman", observes Kuras, “whose determination to document the truth, regardless of personal cost, set her apart from her contemporaries. She brought forth the contemporary times by taking us through the past.”
Fake news: 8 of the most notorious photograph hoaxes, from fairies to UFOs
A picture tells a thousand words, so they say. But it doesn’t always follow that those words speak the truth. Charlotte Hodgman explores the stories behind some of the most remarkable hoax photographs that have been taken since the advent of the technology in the 19th century
The Cottingley Fairies, 1917 When cousins Elsie Wright (above) and Frances Griffiths produced photos of themselves seemingly interacting with sprites, gnomes and fairies, they achieved overnight notoriety and sparked widespread debate. The validity of the photographs divided opinion for more than 60 years, until Elsie finally confessed to the Cottingley Fairy hoax, in 1983: the fairies were, in fact, drawings secured in the ground and to branches with hatpins. Read more | The supernatural interests of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Grow your own... giant vegetables, 1911 In what is surely every gardener’s dream, two men struggle to squeeze a giant root vegetable through a cellar door. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2023/04/GettyImages1139684193-0580196-e1682501769526.jpg" width="620" height="414" alt="'Will It Go In', 1911: two men try to push a giant vegetable through a cellar door (Photo by Alfred Stanley Johnson Jr./Wisconsin Historical Society/Getty Images)" title="'Will It Go In', 1911: two men try to push a giant vegetable through a cellar door (Photo by Alfred Stanley Johnson Jr./Wisconsin Historical Society/Getty Images)" /> Despite their jaw-dropping size, these giant veggies were actually the work of photographer Alfred Stanley Johnson, who was known for adding oversized produce to staged photographs to create ‘tall-tale’ postcards that promoted Wisconsin’s agricultural abundance. Spirit photography, c1862–75 In the wake of the American Civil War, ‘spirit photographer’ William H Mumler claimed he could reunite grieving sitters – on camera at least – with their deceased loved ones one last time. It’s unclear exactly how Mumler achieved such ghostly effects but, despite scepticism and accusations of fraud, there were many willing to pay to have their likeness taken with their dearly departed. Read more | The rise of spiritualism after WW1 The ‘Drowned Man’, 1840 In 1840, a bitter feud was playing out between Hippolyte Bayard and Louis Daguerre for the title of ‘the father of photography’. When Daguerre revealed his daguerreotype – the first practical photographic process – ahead of Bayard, the latter responded with the photo below, depicting himself as a drowned man. Written on the reverse of the photo was a note stating that “the unhappy man [Bayard] threw himself into the water in despair” in response to the lack of recognition received for his role in the invention of photography. In fact, Bayard was alive and well, and now holds the title of creator of the first hoax photograph. The Loch Ness Monster, 1934 Since the first account by Saint Columba in AD 565 of a monster lurking beneath the waters of Loch Ness, the hunt has been underway to find ‘Nessie’. Several images have emerged over the years allegedly ‘proving’ the monster’s existence, including this one, taken by doctor Robert Kenneth Wilson in 1934 and published in the Daily Mail that same year. Decades later, Wilson’s ‘monster’ was found to have been created by grafting a plastic wood neck to a toy submarine. Read more | The quest for the Loch Ness Monster Theodore Roosevelt and the Bull Moose Party, 1912 No, your eyes do not deceive you. Below is a photograph of Theodore Roosevelt crossing a river on a giant moose. It wasn’t, however, taken from life. The image was created by photography firm Underwood and Underwood as Roosevelt was campaigning as a presidential candidate for the Progressive Party (also known as the Bull Moose Party). <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2023/04/GettyImages530860538-b5e6a5a-e1682501579473.jpg" width="620" height="414" alt="Theodore Roosevelt riding a moose in a doctored image for his presidential campaign (Photo by George Rinhart/Corbis via Getty Images)" title="Theodore Roosevelt riding a moose in a doctored image for his presidential campaign (Photo by George Rinhart/Corbis via Getty Images)" /> The image was published in the New York Tribune on 8 September 1912 alongside photographs of two other candidates: incumbent William Howard Taft was depicted astride an elephant, while Woodrow Wilson was pictured on the back of a donkey. Colin Evans the sham showman, 1938 Welsh medium Colin Evans, shown seemingly levitating in the air, drew in huge crowds with his claims that he could be lifted from his chair by the ‘power of the spirits’. In truth, however, he was little more than a fraud. As the audience sat in the pitch dark around him, Evans would jump into the air, simultaneously pressing a button on the end of a cord (seen here in his left hand) that would trigger a flash photograph. The resulting image gave the impression of levitation, although his blurred feet, their movement captured on film as he jumped, would eventually give him away. Read more | How to carry off a great hoax Close encounter, 1976 When Swiss national Billy Meier claimed he had proof that he had been in contact with aliens from the Pleiades star cluster since the age of five, few believed him. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2023/04/GettyImages1174077937-ab96b8e-e1682501926280.jpg" width="620" height="414" alt="Billy Meier's photograph of a UFO flying over the Swiss countryside, 1976 (Photo by Bruno Torricelli/RDB/ullstein bild via Getty Images)" title="Billy Meier's photograph of a UFO flying over the Swiss countryside, 1976 (Photo by Bruno Torricelli/RDB/ullstein bild via Getty Images)" /> Determined to prove his story, Meier produced photographs purporting to show UFOs hovering over the Swiss countryside. Meier went on to found a UFO religion, but his photos have been widely dismissed as fakes. On the podcast | Dr David Clarke explains how the idea of extra-terrestrials developed into an enduring modern myth This article was first published in the April 2023 issue of BBC History Revealed
We asked 10 leading historians to select what they consider to be some of the most important photographs of all time. From the bombing of Hiroshima to Ali's victory in the ring, here are 10 images that shook the world...
A lone protest in Tiananmen Square Beijing, 5 June 1989 When this image of a lone protester standing before a line of tanks in Tiananmen Square first appeared on newspaper front pages, its message seemed simple. Here was a powerful regime brutally dealing with protesters, and this was the point at which that regime would, and should, end. Except it didn’t collapse or democratise; instead China became a huge economic superpower, making this image hard to interpret as part of a liberal historical sequence. This photo pulls together the factors that have shaped not just events in 1989, but the whole trajectory of Chinese history: the supremacy of the state; the continuing impact of conflict; and the enduring power of the individual to re-emerge. Rana Mitter is professor of modern Chinese history at the University of Oxford Earthrise Apollo 8, 24 December 1968 Few would argue the importance of this, one of the first images of Earth rising over the Moon, taken during the Apollo 8 mission – the first manned voyage to do a full lunar orbit. The image was soon circulated around the globe, allowing people to see the planet in a way that earlier generations could only have dreamt of. But its significance in our understanding of Earth as more than just somewhere we inhabit was slow to sink in – arguably it is still doing so. Photographing Earth from space was a feat in itself, but its influence on our views of Earth as a living organism that connects us all, is ongoing. OA Westad is professor of international history at LSE Ali floors Liston Maine, 25 May 1965 In the words of Malcolm X: “The revolt of the American negro” was part of “the rebellion against oppression and colonialism” that characterised the postwar world. It’s this rebellion that the image of the 23-year-old Ali, standing exultant over the defeated Sonny Liston during the rematch to retain his world title in May 1965, encapsulates. When Ali (then known as Cassius Clay) first defeated reigning heavyweight champion Liston, in February 1964, sports fans were shocked. When Clay then converted to Islam and named himself Muhammad Ali, he captured the attention of the world. By the 1970s, Ali’s was among the most famous faces on the planet and sport had been established as a global lingua franca. Dr Peter Thompson is a lecturer in American history at the University of Oxford The dead of Antietam Nr Sharpsburg, Maryland, 19 September 1862 Taken just two days after the battle of Antietam, this image is among the first in history to show dead soldiers on the field of battle. The impact of this and other similar images of civilians was extraordinary. One reporter wrote: “If he [Mathew Brady, who exhibited the images] has not brought bodies and laid them in our door-yards and along streets, he has done something very like it...” This and other photographs like it found their way into the homes of tens of thousands of 19th-century Americans, who purchased stereograph images to view in 3D, presumably with a mixture of horror and disgust. Antietam was the bloodiest day of the American Civil War up to that date, with 3,600 dead and 17,000 wounded. The battle triggered an escalation in the brutality of the fighting, marking the end of the first, more restrained period of the war. Dr Adam IP Smith is senior lecturer in history at UCL The nightmare of Hiroshima Enola Gay, 6 August 1945 Taken from the aircraft that dropped the first atomic bomb, this photograph of the giant mushroom cloud that rose above Hiroshima within minutes of detonation brought home to the world the sheer magnitude of what had happened. Released on 11 August and published in the US press the following day, Caron’s photo captured the awesome power of modern military technology and prepared the world for other, more striking shots of an image that would most haunt the postwar imagination. The photograph’s focus on the mushroom cloud distanced viewers from the horrific destruction on the ground – shots of which were censored for weeks – making it easier to rationalise the use of an atomic bomb on an urban area. Dr Adrian Bingham is a senior lecturer in modern history at the University of Sheffield Read more | Should America have dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Nelson Mandela’s walk to freedom Paarl, South Africa, 11 February 1990 When Nelson Mandela left prison after 27 years, he carried with him the great hopes of the majority of South Africans – but also the fears of those who supported white minority rule. To many, this image of Mandela – his right fist raised in the power salute of the ANC – symbolised the beginning of the end of apartheid. No photograph had been seen of Mandela in a generation, so few people knew what he looked like. Just before his release, a photograph with President de Klerk showed Mandela standing stiffly, with grey hair. But his first steps to freedom showed that – now 71 – his commitment to the struggle for a non-racial, democratic future was undiminished. Mandela’s walk to freedom was celebrated across the world. Four years later, he became South Africa’s first black president. Dr Susan Williams is a senior fellow at the School of Advanced Study, University of London On the podcast | Peter Hain reflects on Nelson Mandela's remarkable achievements Fear and pain at the Somme July 1916, northern France Although not technically a photograph – it’s taken from the 1916 film The Battle of the Somme – this image sums up the grim realities of trench warfare. A far cry from the straight, neatly sandbagged ‘stage trenches’ constructed in London’s Kensington Gardens, the real things on the western front were revealed as confused, crumbling and shallow – offering minimal protection. Nearly half of all Britons saw the film, which was released barely a month after the bloody campaign, in which more than 1 million Allied and German troops were killed or wounded. The fear and pain on this soldier’s face as he struggles with a wounded comrade still serves as a reminder of extraordinary lives forced upon ordinary men. Dr Rachel Duffett is a lecturer at the University of Essex Stalin erases Trotsky from history Outside the Bolshoi Theatre, Moscow, 5 May 1920 Stalinism as a system was peculiar in many ways but perhaps unique in one – in its morbid, almost paranoid, fear of its own revolutionary past. This is why Stalin killed the old Bolsheviks during the 1930s, why history was constantly being rewritten to fit into the needs of the Soviet state, and why one of the most famous revolutionaries of all – Leon Trotsky – had to be deleted from the historical record. This image is one of the most famous examples of Stalin’s attempts to ‘airbrush’ history. In the top image, Trotsky leans against a wooden pulpit as Lenin rallies troops; in the second image, he is nowhere to be seen. Its significance still resonates today. Vladimir Putin would of course deny that his own regime and that created after 1917 have anything in common, yet I think they do: they both believe in the old Stalinist maxim that ‘history’ has no other purpose than to serve the needs of the authoritarian state. Michael Cox is emeritus professor of international relations at LSE Raising the red flag over the Reichstag Berlin, 2 May 1945 First published in the Soviet magazine Ogonek, on 13 May 1945, this image of a soldier flying the Soviet flag from the roof of the Reichstag in Berlin, high above the smoking ruins of Adolf Hitler’s capital, has become one of the most recognisable symbols of the destruction of Nazi Germany and the Allied victory. Far from being a candid shot, the photograph was carefully staged by photographer Yevgeny Khaldei, and subsequently manipulated, yet it remains a symbol of some of the key aspects of 20th-century history, not least the appearance of the USSR as a power that would dominate Europe for the next 45 years. The image resonated with war-weary Europeans as a symbol of Nazi defeat, the end of the bloody conflict, and the dawn of a new era. Evan Mawdsley is professor of international history at the University of Glasgow The burning girl of Trang Bang South Vietnam, 8 June 1972 This image of nine-year-old Kim Phuc (left), her features contorted with pain and fear as she and other children flee their burning village, is not one that can be forgotten quickly. The sight of Phuc – a victim of the accidental napalm bombing of civilians fleeing Trang Bang village, carried out by the planes of US-backed Saigon – prompted questions that revealed not just the horrific pain and disastrous personal impact of the Vietnam War, but war’s capacity to produce appalling consequences from grotesque error. Anti-war sentiment was well established by 1972; it did not need this image to justify or sustain it. But it made the Nixon administration anxious in the build-up to the presidential election campaign. White House tapes for 12 June 1972 reveal Nixon’s aide, HR Haldeman, suggesting the image may have been “fixed” by Nixon’s political opponents for electoral gain. Five days after this conversation, burglars operating for the Campaign to Reelect the President entered the Democratic National Committee’s HQ at the Watergate offices in Washington, the result of which really did change the world. The terrified girl survived her injuries and later established the Kim Phuc Foundation, providing medical and psychological assistance to child victims of war. Richard Carwardine is president of Corpus Christi College, Oxford This article was first published in the January 2014 issue of BBC History Magazine
In pictures: erotic postcards of the early 20th century
By the early 20th century, hundreds of thousands of images had become available showing women in varying degrees of undress. Printed with postcard backs, in Britain the trade in these erotic cards was hidden, and they were often sold 'under the counter' in tobacconists, newsagents and bookshops...
As historian Nigel Sadler reveals, in earlier years the aim of such images was to capture the female form rather than to titillate, and photographers could only produce images of the female nude for use by artists. In Erotic Postcards of the Early Twentieth Century, Sadler explores the changes in social attitudes, fashions and technology through the medium of erotic postcards, and charts the journey from the partly clad to full nude. Writing for History Extra, Sadler summarises the history of erotic postcards, and shares some of the most fascinating images from his book… For centuries, artists have depicted naked females. Therefore, it was not surprising that when photography was introduced, some photographers gravitated to the female nude as their subject matter. The idea was to capture the female form rather than to titillate. However, as the genre progressed images became more risqué: clothing left on but unbuttoned; furniture added to suggest a bedroom; the model interacting with the camera by gazing at it. Bettany Hughes on the symbol of Venus In bed with the Romans: a brief history of sex in Ancient Rome History’s most fascinating muses The authorities wanted to control the production and sale of these images. With daguerreotype images (the first photographic process) in the 1840s and 1850s this was easy, as there were few photographers, and in France photographers had to register with the authorities and could only produce images for use by artists. As photography became easier and cheaper, more studios opened and some, mostly in Paris, started to produce risqué postcards. At this point the authorities lost control. The heyday of the erotic postcard was between the 1890s and the 1930s, but in this instance the term ‘postcard’ is a misnomer: even though many were printed with a postcard back, they were intended to be collected rather than sent. The postcard size made it easier to hide and sell the cards ‘under the counter’. For studios the priority became maximising income rather than creating art. In the studio, photographers created one set of images and took a series of photographs of the model – starting fully dressed and ending topless or fully naked. These were then sold in sets of up to 12 cards, and became known as ‘French postcards’, as this was where most were produced. Due to the clandestine nature of the business (even though many cards carried studio logos), little is known about the studios or the photographers responsible for making erotic postcards. Very few photographers ‘signed’ their work, and even less is known about the models: they were originally believed to be Parisian prostitutes, but it in fact appears they were more likely working-class women who made money on the side by modelling. The postcards also reflect changing ideologies in the work of artists and in society generally. The ‘new sculpture movement’ of the 1870s introduced more realistic model poses, and pushed the boundaries of acceptable taste for nude figures – this opened the way for the wider range of poses used by early 20th-century photographers. Sexing up history: how to study and tell the history of sex The Tudor sex guide Queen Victoria’s voracious appetite for food and sex By 1880, ‘art photography’ had developed, because photographers wanted their work to be accepted as an art form. Some extended this into the study of naked people and posed models following the rules of painting, experimenting with light and shade. The German avant-garde ‘new age outdoor’ or plein air movement popularised naturism in the 1920s and 1930s, and encouraged many photographers to step outside the comfort of the studio to utilise natural light and scenery. The risqué postcard genre in effect ended by the start of the Second World War, and post-war these types of images appeared in magazines and in a range of photographic formats. One type of postcard rarely discussed when studying the First World War is the risqué image showing women in a state of undress or fully nude. This postcard, by Jean Agélou Studios in Paris, is from the start of a risqué sequence (a latter card probably showed this woman at least topless) and was sent to Miss Gladys Gamble by Corporal Black in 1916 informing her that he was in the Reading War Hospital recovering from shrapnel injuries. (© Courtesy of Sands of Time Consultancy) <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2018/01/644716-10a-3a179c1.jpg" width="1000" height="1535" alt="Woman with leg up on a chair" title="One type of postcard rarely discussed when studying the First World War is the risqué image showing women in a state of undress or fully nude. This postcard, by Jean Agélou Studios in Paris, is from the start of a risqué sequence (a latter card probably showed this woman at least topless) and was sent to Miss Gladys Gamble by Corporal Black in 1916 informing her that he was in the Reading War Hospital recovering from shrapnel injuries. (© Courtesy of Sands of Time Consultancy)" /> At the turn of the 20th century Lucien Waléry (1863–1935) was a popular photographer who captured regular models and stars of the time like Nina Barkis (pictured below), an opera singer and dancer. He was happy photographing women both in body stockings and naked, and in the 1920s Waléry produced a series of photographs of a topless Josephine Baker (an American-born French dancer, singer, and actress). (© Courtesy of Sands of Time Consultancy) <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2018/01/644716-18b-d91eeee.jpg" width="1000" height="1527" alt="A woman photographed in a body stocking, early 20th century" title="At the turn of the 20th century Lucien Waléry (1863–1935) was a popular photographer who captured regular models and stars of the time like Nina Barkis (pictured here), an opera singer and dancer. He was happy photographing women both in body stockings and naked, and in the 1920s Waléry produced a series of photographs of a topless Josephine Baker (an American-born French dancer, singer, and actress). (© Courtesy of Sands of Time Consultancy)" /> The Loges d’Artistes were the dressing rooms at theatres in France – a natural arena for women to be getting dressed and undressed in. This is just one card from a large set from c1900, and it shows performers preparing for Faust - a play about a scholar who sells his soul to the devil. (© Courtesy of Sands of Time Consultancy) The text in this image suggests that these ladies are preparing to go for a swim and are changing in the bathroom. Surprisingly, given the subject matter, this card was posted in Belgium in 1907 and was delivered to its intended recipient, Mademoiselle Gabrielle Van Sale. The sender is unknown. (© Courtesy of Sands of Time Consultancy) <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2018/01/644716-34a-b8e603a.jpg" width="1000" height="1539" alt="Two women photographed as if preparing for a swim" title="The text in this image suggests that these ladies are preparing to go for a swim and are changing in the bathroom. Surprisingly, given the subject matter, this card was posted in Belgium in 1907 and was delivered to its intended recipient, Mademoiselle Gabrielle Van Sale. The sender is unknown. (© Courtesy of Sands of Time Consultancy)" /> This Italian card is attempting to achieve a pose similar to a classical painting. (© Courtesy of Sands of Time Consultancy) The most common way of adding colour was through hand-tinting, which could result in much softer colours than real life – as shown in this image, which is also found on cards with the logo of Charles Collas and Co, the company name of a postcard producer. (© Courtesy of Sands of Time Consultancy) <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2018/01/644716-67c-c5a20aa.jpg" width="1000" height="1530" alt="A photograph of a nude woman, early 20th century" title="The most common way of adding colour was through hand-tinting, which could result in much softer colours than real life – as shown in this image, which is also found on cards with the logo of Charles Collas and Co, the company name of a postcard producer. (© Courtesy of Sands of Time Consultancy)" /> The beach and seaside became a natural setting for naturist poses, partly because of the seclusion of some areas, but also as some beaches openly allowed nudity. This image was probably produced in Germany (c1920s). (© Courtesy of Sands of Time Consultancy) <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2018/01/644716-86b-e884e94.jpg" width="1000" height="1472" alt="A nude woman on a beach, probably produced in Germany in the 1920s" title="The beach and seaside became a natural setting for naturist poses, partly because of the seclusion of some areas, but also as some beaches openly allowed nudity. This image was probably produced in Germany (c1920s). (© Courtesy of Sands of Time Consultancy)" /> This card, published by the A Noyer Studios, was part of series of a woman in a river and illustrates Julian Mandel’s skill as a photographer. He uses light, shade, and reflection to make the most of his model and to make it a work of art. (© Courtesy of Sands of Time Consultancy) <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2018/01/644716-88d-c234327.jpg" width="1000" height="1562" alt="A nude woman photographed in a lake, early 20th century" title="This card, published by the A Noyer Studios, was part of series of a woman in a river and illustrates Julian Mandel’s skill as a photographer. He uses light, shade, and reflection to make the most of his model and to make it a work of art. (© Courtesy of Sands of Time Consultancy)" /> Nigel Sadler is the author of Erotic Postcards of the Early Twentieth Century (Amberley, 2015). Find out more here. This article was first published by History Extra in August 2015
Earth from space: How pioneering photos changed our view of the planet
It’s over two millennia since Greek philosophers proposed that the Earth is round – but just 50 years since the first photos showing the whole planet were taken. Christopher Potter explores the history and impact of the first images of Earth from space
In 1948, the British physicist Fred Hoyle wrote that “once a photograph of the Earth, taken from the outside, is available… a new idea as powerful as any in history will be let loose”. For millennia, human beings could only imagine what the Earth might look like seen from the viewpoint of the heavens. Some ancient Greek philosophers had suspected that the Earth was probably a sphere. Plato even thought that the Earth might be a brightly coloured sphere – but, being Plato, he had in mind a Platonic ideal of the Earth rather than the Earth itself. By the second century AD, the astronomer Ptolemy knew from scientific considerations – by observation and measurement – that the Earth is, indeed, round. But knowing is not the same as seeing. Where was the visual evidence? From the late 18th century, hot-air balloonists first saw the Earth from a perspective that was not part of the Earth itself – not from the top of a mountain or a cathedral spire, but from the perspective of another medium. And in 1935, as part of an expedition sponsored by the National Geographic Society, Captains Albert Stephens and Orvil Anderson of the US Army Air Corps ascended in a gondola attached to a helium-filled balloon named Explorer II, reaching a record-breaking altitude of 13.7 miles (22km) – higher than any commercial jet aeroplane is permitted to fly even today. As the craft sailed high above South Dakota, a photograph taken from the balloon gondola captured a panorama stretching 330 miles (530km), revealing the curvature of the Earth for the first time. At last, here was visual rather than merely intellectual proof that we live on a vast sphere. To see more of the Earth’s curving horizon, though, pictures would have to be taken from a higher vantage point. And to rise higher would require not balloons or even planes but rockets. Back down to Earth: the legacy of the 1969 moon landing The Space Race: The Cold War rivalry that put humans on the Moon At the end of the Second World War, American forces captured the German engineer Wernher von Braun, the designer of the world’s first ballistic missile. His 14-metre-tall, 12.5-tonne rocket known as the V-2 had not affected the outcome of the war, as Hitler had hoped, but it was now to play a central role in the history of space exploration. On 16 April 1946 von Braun and his German colleagues – who would become US citizens – launched a V-2 on American soil. Over the following few years more than 60 V-2s, modified to carry various kinds of scientific equipment, would be launched from a site in New Mexico. Clyde T Holliday, a photography specialist, was responsible for the difficult task of working out how to attach cameras that would survive the rockets’ impact. Holliday got his best set of aerial photos from a V-2 flight in 1948, taken at an altitude of 65 miles (105km). From these images, and another set of photographs taken from the flight of an Aerobee rocket launched an hour later, Halliday patched together a 2,700-mile- (4,350km-) wide panorama of the Earth – an image spanning one-tenth of the planet’s circumference. In 1958, America’s newly formed space agency, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Nasa), announced the launch of Project Mercury, a series of one-manned orbital flights. From the start, Nasa grandees were against the astronauts taking what they sneeringly called ‘tourist’ photographs of the Earth. John Glenn, the first American to orbit the Earth, had to insist on taking his own camera on board. He bought it at a local drugstore for $19.95. Not surprisingly, the photographs he took were worthless. The situation improved when Richard Underwood was appointed to head up a small advisory group responsible for photography. After he graduated from university, Underwood had joined the US Army Corps of Engineers as part of an army project to study the Earth’s geological features from the air. It was said that he could identify any region of the Earth from an aerial photo. Some remarkable photographs of the Earth seen from orbit were taken during the two-manned Gemini programme that followed Mercury. In June 1965, during the second crewed flight, Ed White became the first American to walk in space; from his unique vantage point he captured a few high-quality photographs of the Earth. Underwood pointed out to his still-sceptical Nasa bosses that, in such photos, they were looking at the planet as no human being had seen it before. Opinion: Was the Moon landing really a great leap for mankind? The history of the moon landing: everything you need to know However, a photograph of the whole Earth could be taken only from much farther away – from outer space. On 10 August 1966, Lunar Orbiter 1 became the first American spacecraft to orbit the moon – and it carried a camera. It was just one of many missions undertaken to identify a possible landing place for the upcoming manned Apollo missions. Lunar Orbiter 1 had enough power to take only 211 pictures in medium resolution, but Underwood hoped that at least one of the photographs would be not of the moon but of the Earth. Yet it almost wasn’t taken. A decision had still not been reached even when the craft was in orbit around the moon, and there were arguments right up to the last minute. Underwood was told that a shot of the Earth would be a waste of film, that such a photograph would have no scientific value, and so on. Eventually a senior figure at the meeting – the vice-president of Boeing – said: “To hell with it. It is a public service. It might be tremendous”. Word spread around the centre that the picture had been taken. Joseph Karth, chairman of the congressional committee on space sciences, was soon on the phone to Lee Scherer, Nasa’s program manager, asking: “What’s all this about you taking a picture of the Earth?” Scherer was defensive, and started to reel off any reasons that popped into his head that seemed to justify the taking of the photograph. “Well, I don’t give a damn why you did it,” Karth cut in, “but me and 200 million other Americans thank you.” When the photographs from the mission were released to the public, those of the moon attracted more attention. The subsequent official report summarising all five Orbiter missions did not mention the photograph of the Earth at all. Perhaps because of the poor quality of the image, its significance was missed. Though the photo was black and white, and much of the planet was in shadow, for the first time in human history an image of the whole Earth had been captured. In early July the following year, 1967, the Department of Defense Gravity Experiment (DODGE) military satellite was launched. The director of DODGE predicted an educational use for satellites; no one at the time foresaw their power to change life on Earth utterly. Curiously, the evidence already existed. Just a few days earlier, the BBC had broadcast a live TV show called Our World, conceived by Aubrey Singer, which for the first time connected much of the world through the air waves. The programme featured artists from 19 countries, including Picasso and Maria Callas. During the closing segment from the UK, The Beatles – dressed in gorgeous hippy gear and surrounded by flowers – sang ‘All You Need is Love’ for the first time. The broadcast had been made possible by the existence of the latest satellites. Less than a week after the broadcast, the DODGE satellite transmitted back to Earth the first colour images of the whole planet fully illuminated. 10 astronomers you’ve (probably) never heard of The astronomer and the witch: Johannes Kepler’s fight to save his mother from execution Towards the end of 1967, an unmanned Saturn V rocket was tested for the first time in the Apollo 4 mission. Wernher von Braun’s masterpiece – a direct descendant of the V-2 – is still the largest rocket ever launched. Between 1968 and 1972, during the course of nine manned Apollo missions, Saturn V rockets would launch 24 Americans on journeys that took them to the moon and safely back to Earth. On its first test in 1967, the Saturn V was unmanned but a camera mounted on the capsule on top of the rocket captured 700 images. From 11,000 miles (17,700km) above the Earth’s surface, Apollo 4 captured the first colour negatives of a fully illuminated Earth. Yet a Nasa press release produced after the mission failed to mention the photographs. The images of the Earth transmitted by DODGE and the photographs taken by the Apollo 4 camera were made public, but none of them made much of an impact. It was yet to sink in that these pictures provided answers to an ancient mystery: what did the Earth look like from the outside? On 21 December 1968, the three-man crew of Apollo 8 – the first manned mission to the moon – saw what no human being had ever witnessed before: the Earth as a sphere in space. Three days later, as they orbited the moon, the astronauts were the first to experience another extraordinary sight: the Earth ‘rising’ over the moon’s horizon. Crew member Bill Anders managed to capture the moment on photographic film. The images from DODGE and Apollo 4 showed the Earth as a drab blue-and-white sphere, but in Anders’ high-quality photograph – designated Nasa image AS8-14-2383, which soon became known popularly as ‘Earthrise’ – the Earth came colourfully alive. Later that same day, Christmas Eve, as they approached their tenth and last orbit of the moon, the crew made a final TV broadcast back to Earth. At the end of the transmission, each of the crew signed off in turn by reading the first verses of the book of Genesis: “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth…” Commander Frank Borman was the last to read: “And God called the dry land Earth, and the gathering together of the waters called he seas. And God saw that it was good. And from the crew of Apollo 8, we close with good night, good luck, a merry Christmas, and God bless all of you – all of you on the good Earth”. In an article that appeared in the New York Times the following day – Christmas Day – journalist Edward Fiske wondered whether Apollo 8 had made urgent the need for some kind of synthesis between the sacred and the secular. He argued for a new version of Christianity, purged of the supernatural – something more in keeping with the space age. The Earthrise photograph reinforced in a humanistic way what many would have found unpalatable about the Genesis reading. Fiske wrote that the photograph was a “humbling reminder of the world’s insignificance”. But was the Earth insignificant? The crew of Apollo 8 felt the opposite – that the Earth was the only thing out there of any real interest, the only thing of colour. Indeed, the photographer himself, Bill Anders, confessed that he had soon become bored by the moon’s unrelenting sameness. Ironically, it was Pope Paul VI, addressing a crowd in St Peter’s Square soon after the Apollo 8 splashdown, who made one of the most perceptive secular observations: “The stature of man,” he said, “in prodigious confrontation with the cosmos emerges immensely small and immensely large”. We now know that the Soviets had taken Earthrise-type photographs some weeks before the Americans, but they were of poor quality and in black and white. Underwood said that the Soviets plucked reels of film out of a bin, as if it were a tub filled with nuts and bolts. There was no consistency in the emulsions, and the stock was often out of date. Photography was never a priority for them, and became a priority for the Americans only because of Underwood’s advocacy. Opinion: Was the Moon landing really a great leap for mankind? The history of the moon landing: everything you need to know The nine Apollo missions were framed by two photographs: Earthrise, taken during the first, and the so-called ‘Blue Marble’ photograph, taken during the last mission, Apollo 17. Underwood explained to astronaut Jack Schmitt that if he remembered to take a photograph about five hours into the flight after launch early on 7 December 1972, the chances were good that it would become a classic: this was the only mission in the sequence to launch at night, and at that point in the launch the astronauts would see the Earth brightly lit. Schmitt would be far enough away to see the planet as a sphere in space, but still close enough to capture the detail of its surface. At five hours and six minutes after take-off, at a distance of about 28,000 miles (45,000km) from the Earth, Schmitt took one of the most famous photographs ever captured: the first detailed, high-quality colour photo of the whole Earth in full illumination – the ‘Blue Marble’. What Fred Hoyle had not anticipated was that photographs of the Earth would begin to make an impact only when they were of high quality and in colour. In black and white, photographs of the Earth look just like any other heavenly body – but in colour they confirmed what the first ecologists had intuited decades earlier: seen from the outside, the Earth looks different from anything else. James Lovelock, who had worked for Nasa, readily admitted that those first photographs were the inspiration behind his Gaia theory – the concept that the totality of life on Earth behaves as if it were a living entity. The Earth is varied and colourful because it is alive. Nearly all of the 24 astronauts who saw the whole Earth from space – still the only humans to have seen for themselves the entire planet in a single glance – were struck by how fragile the Earth looks. From space, the Earth’s atmosphere appears as a thin blue line around the circumference of the planet, a hazy penumbra a mere 50 miles (80km) thick, clinging to a disk 7,917 miles (12,742km) across. “It is a pity,” wrote Apollo 11 astronaut Mike Collins, “that my eyes have seen more than my brain has been able to assimilate.” On his way back from the moon, he looked out of the window and tried to find the Earth, later describing his experience thus: “The little planet is so small out there in the vastness that at first I couldn’t even locate it. And when I did, a tingling of awe spread over me. There it was, shining like a jewel in a black sky. I looked at it in wonderment, suddenly aware of how its uniqueness is stamped in every atom of my body… I looked away for a moment and, poof, it was gone. I couldn’t find it again without searching closely. At that point I made my discovery. Suddenly I knew what a tiny, fragile thing Earth is.” Many Apollo astronauts would make the same point – that the real value of the missions had been not the discovery of the moon but the new perspective it gave them on the Earth they had left behind. Did NASA really pick the brains of the Tower of London armoury when designing the first space suits? NASA’s unknown Welsh hero: the story of Tecwyn Roberts A number of them also came to believe – at least, at first – that seeing the Earth from the vantage point of space might be enough to change humans fundamentally. Apollo 16 astronaut John Young, who died in January, said that the experience made him realise that “we worry about the wrong things, like the price of a gallon of gas, rather than the Earth as a whole”. Mike Collins made a similar point: “the planet we share unites us in a way far more basic and far more important than differences in skin colour or religion or economic system”. Some astronauts did indeed change their lives dramatically afterwards. Two years after he had returned to Earth, Apollo 14 astronaut Ed Mitchell founded the Institute of Noetic Sciences, an organisation devoted to the study of consciousness. On his return journey to Earth, Mitchell had experienced what he called an epiphany – that the universe is “in some way conscious”; it was not so much a religious experience, he said, but a natural response of the body “to the overwhelming sense of unity of the universe”. A couple of astronauts began to write poetry; another began obsessively to paint the moon. Several turned to God – notably Apollo 15 astronaut Jim Irwin, who spent the last years of his life exploring Mount Ararat in Turkey in an attempt to find the remains of Noah’s Ark. Nasa doctor Charles A ‘Chuck’ Berry said that “no one who went into space wasn’t changed by the experience”. From space, it is clear that our home is a finite resource, and that the borders between countries are artificial constructs. And yet we continue to live in ways that contradict these self-evident truths. Almost 50 years after Earthrise was taken, we might wonder whether the transformation that Hoyle predicted has truly come about. What lessons, if any, have we learned? Indeed, we might wonder whether the human species is capable of real change. Can we grow into the size of our brains, or will technological progress outstrip our ability to grow wise? Every new generation now lives in a world of technology that seems like sorcery to those who lived just a generation or two before. But human beings are cynical by nature. We quickly grow bored. “People felt that the space programme put human problems in perspective and that humanity would change as a result,” Jim Lovell wrote, 40 years after his second mission to the moon. “But the mind forgets very easily, and not too long after that people got back to the way they lived before – wars and disruption and human cruelty.” Soon after the first photographs of the Earth were made public, the writer Anne Morrow Lindbergh, wife of the famous aviator Charles, wondered if it might take centuries before humans fully absorbed the implications of the new perspective offered by those images. Half a century later, scientific consensus suggests that humans have caused, and continue to cause, planet-altering environmental damage. It might be said that we’re not absorbing the implications anywhere near quickly enough. Christopher Potter is the author of The Earth Gazers (Head of Zeus, 2017) This article was taken from issue 8 of BBC World Histories magazine
No Man’s Land: Women photographers in the First World War
A new exhibition exploring female perspectives on the First World War has opened at Impressions Gallery in Bradford, featuring images taken by women working on the frontline, as well as contemporary artists directly inspired by the conflict. We talked to Dr Pippa Oldfield, curator of the exhibition, to find out more… Please note this article contains images of a sensitive nature
Irene ‘Winkie’ Gartside-Spaight in no man’s land. Photograph by Mairi Chisholm, c1916. (The National Library of Scotland) Q. What was the inspiration for the exhibition? A. We wanted to commemorate the centenary of the First World War at Impressions Gallery, but take a different angle. We decided to look at women’s experiences of the First World War through their photography. There has been quite a lot of focus recently on women’s roles in the first world war, but their contribution to war photography seems to have been ignored in favour of photos made by men. As a curator, what I was interested in doing was finding out what kind of pictures women took and how their use of photography would express their own experiences and perspective. That was the question that kicked off the project. Q. What do these photographs tell us about women’s experiences? A. Women couldn’t join the armed forces as soldiers during the First World War, but that didn’t mean they couldn’t get involved in other ways. While many women worked on the home front, others volunteered for overseas positions. The women in our exhibition – Mairi Chisholm, Florence Farmborough and Olive Edis – were all working overseas during the war and taking photographs coming from different angles. Mairi Chisolm is a particularly interesting case study. She was this intrepid ambulance driver who volunteered to join the Flying Ambulance Corps when she was 18-years-old. She then went with her friend Elsie Knocker to set up a first aid post in Belgium just yards away from the trenches, and she used a snapshot camera to take photographs of the kind of things she was seeing and experiencing. Some of her images are horrific – particularly those depicting dead soldiers and no man’s land – but they also depict plenty of fun moments too. There are quite a few photographs that she took that show Elsie joking around with the Belgian soldiers. Her images show how people can make the best of difficult and traumatic circumstances. They’re very warm and human – quite different to the official war photography that was released at that time. So compared to someone like Horace Nicholls [appointed Home Front Official Photographer during the First World War], whose images of women’s war work on the home front are very orderly and composed, Mairi’s photographs are incredibly personal and spontaneous. They are almost reminiscent of the type of images people take on their mobile phones today. Elsie Knocker. Photograph by Mairi Chisholm. (National Library of Scotland) Q. What can you tell us about photography in general at the time? A. At the time of the First World War, snapshot cameras were still a very recent invention. They were cheap and portable, so you didn’t have to be a professional photographer to take pictures. It was a really big watershed moment in the history of war photography because it meant that ordinary people could capture their experiences. Kodak even marketed one particular snapshot camera – the Vest Pocket Kodak – as a soldier’s camera that could be taken to the front line and used to make a memento of the war. Despite being advertised for soldiers, snapshot cameras were actually banned at the beginning of the war by Lord Kitchener, the British Secretary of State for War. You have to remember that at this point in time newspapers were not permitted to show dead bodies, and the government didn’t want photos depicting the true horrors of war from reaching the general public. The ban was also in place to try to control incidents such as the publication of snapshots from the Christmas truce of December 1914 [an unofficial ceasefire that took place on the western front]. These images, showing troops ‘fraternising’ with the enemy, went against the nationalistic ethos of the day. Q. How much would a snapshot camera cost? A. When first introduced in the UK in 1912, they cost £1.10 (about £70 in today’s money). They weren’t super cheap, but they were certainly accessible to a lot of people. By 1915 at least 28,000 cameras had been sold in the UK alone. A lot of the women who volunteered to go to the western front were upper or middle-class, so they could generally afford a camera. Q. Tell us about Olive Edis, who features in the exhibition. She has been described as the UK’s first official female war photographer– is this true? A. I would say that she is the UK’s first official female photographer who was sent to a war zone. That’s because there was also the military photographer Christina Broom, who was official photographer to the Household Division, but she was based in the UK during the war and didn’t go abroad. Olive Edis was sent to Northern France and Flanders. She was not the first female war photographer to be officially commissioned in the world though – there are claims for other women in Spain, Mexico and the USA. Commandant Johnson and two other women of the General Service Voluntary Aid Detachment (VAD) Motor Convoy outside Nissen Huts, Abbeville, France, 1919. Photograph by Olive Edis. (IWM Q8036) Q. How significant were Olive’s achievements? A. It was a massive step forward for women. There weren’t that many professional photographers at the western front anyway – we’re talking less than 10 – so the fact that one of them was a woman was quite remarkable. What’s interesting about Olive is that she was a portrait photographer, so she would traditionally work in a studio. That was the kind of photography that women were ‘allowed’ to do at the time. Being commissioned to photograph war, which was traditionally seen as a masculine field, was really quite unusual. Olive was quite revolutionary in that sense. Miss Minns, Queen Alexandra’s Imperial Military Nursing Service (QAIMNS), matron of a hospital on the quay at Le Havre, France, 1919. Photograph by Olive Edis. (IWM Q8051) Q. Did women capture images or moments that perhaps wouldn’t have been noticed by a man? Is there a gender aspect to these photographs? A. When I first began my PhD research into women and war photography, I did wonder whether men and women take different pictures. There is an assumption that women would shy away from taking pictures of the grislier details of war, but you can see from the photographs in our exhibition that this not the case. So I would say that the answer is no, but I think it’s also a bit more complicated than that. A dead Russian soldier, photographed on the road to Monasterzhiska (Ukraine). Photograph by Florence Farmborough, 1916. (IWM Q98431) In my opinion, there is nothing intrinsically different between men and women that makes them want to photograph different things. Where you do see differences in their work, this tends to be informed by access and the constraints or limitations imposed on gender roles. For example, if women are more likely to be working in nursing during the war, then naturally you might find more photos of that type of work. But it doesn’t mean that women are intrinsically more interested in photographing nursing than men. One interesting thing to consider is whether women behave differently with female photographers. Olive Edis was commissioned by the Women’s Work Sub-Committee because they thought that she would get a different response than a male photographer. They believed that she would be more accepted by the women she was commissioned to photograph and could therefore get more intimate pictures. In this sense, the photographs that men and women take can perhaps be influenced by power dynamics and relationships. Q. You mentioned that women’s contribution to war photography seems to have been overlooked in favour of photos made by men. Why is this? A. The contribution of women to war photography is generally overlooked and underrated. There have been hundreds and hundreds of female photographers who have been ignored, so there’s still a lot of work to do to get them into the history books. Part of the reason for this is that war has always been gendered as a masculine activity. In terms of photography and visual media, it just follows on from that. So war photography is something people associate with a daring photo-journalist out on the front line risking his life alongside the soldiers – someone like Robert Capa, for example, who made iconic pictures of the Spanish Civil War and the D-Day landings. Of course, this is something that has been difficult for women to emulate. Women have often been forbidden from being at the front lines, and historically their photographs have been received differently, perhaps considered not ‘authentic’, simply because they have not been made by a man. That’s something I hope this exhibition will demystify – the authentic experience of women who have experienced war. Their images are equally powerful and arresting. Russian Cossack troops in winter uniforms outside their accommodation huts. Photograph by Florence Farmborough. (IWM Q98429) Q. The exhibition includes works by modern-day photographers. What is the reason for this and what is the role of art in remembering events such as the First World War? A. The exhibition commemorates the centenary, and I wanted to reflect some of the ways in which women are photographing war, a hundred years after the conflict. There are lots of ways art helps us respond to the world. Art can move us and it can make us feel empathy. Certainly, I had quite an emotional response to some of the images produced by our contemporary photographers. Shot at Dawn by Chloe Dewe Mathews, for example, is a really interesting body of work that explores a secret chapter of history – the stories of the men, some of whom were probably suffering from PTSD, who were executed by firing squad for desertion. What Chloe did was travel to the places in Northern France and Flanders where these men were executed and photographed the site at the same time of day and in the same season. Nothing is explicitly shown in the landscape, but what is really powerful about the images is that they let your imagination fill in the blanks. That’s a good example of how photography can be used to elicit an emotional response, spark our imagination and activate memories. Private Joseph Byers and Private Andrew Evans. Time of deaths unknown. 6 February 1915. Private George E. Collins. Time of death 7:30am. 15 February 1915. Six Farm, Loker, West-Vlaanderen. From 'Shot at Dawn', 2014. (Chloe Dewe Matthews) Private Henry Hughes. Time of death 5.50am. 10 April 1918. Klijtebeek stream, Dikkebus, Ieper, West-Vlaanderen. From 'Shot at Dawn', 2014. (Chloe Dewe Matthews) Q. Tell us about some of the other images that moved you… A. I find some of the works by Mairi Chisolm really extraordinary because they show her humour and sense of mischief. There is this picture of two men on a see-saw – just yards away from no man’s land – that totally changed my view on what the First World War looked like. It’s so unexpected to see this moment of real warmth and humour taking place in such horrendous circumstances. Elsie Knocker with the see-saw at Pervyse. Photograph by Mairi Chisholm. (National Library of Scotland) Florence Farmborough, on the other hand, captured some horrifyingly brutal images while photographing on the eastern front. There is this one image that I find incredibly sad – it’s a picture of a little Romanian boy and his arm has been blasted off by shrapnel. He’s sitting on the knee of a nurse and his face is just so desolate. It’s an image that really gets to you. Gheorghi, a two-year-old who had lost his right arm, being tended to by a Red Cross nurse following fighting at Seret on the Romanian Front, 1917. Photo by Florence Farmborough. (IWM Q097851). Q. What are you hoping that the audience takes away from this exhibition? A. I hope the exhibition helps to broaden people’s understanding of what the war was really like and how it affected people. I hope that it helps to move people away from the idea that experiences of war are by nature a masculine experience. And although the subject matter of war is of course often upsetting, I also want people to take something positive from the women featured in the exhibition. I hope visitors will look back at them from the 21st century and see how pioneering they were and the risks that they took. I think their stories are really inspiring and I think people will go away from this exhibition feeling inspired too. Dr. Pippa Oldfield is Head of Programme at Impressions Gallery in Bradford and curator of No Man’s Land: Women’s Photography and the First World War. The exhibition will run at the gallery until the 30th December before beginning a tour of UK venues in 2018 and 2019, including Bristol Cathedral, The Turnpike in Leigh, and Bishop Auckland Town Hall. The exhibition is supported by the National Lottery through Arts Council England, the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, and the Peter E. Palmquist Memorial Fund for Historical Photographic Research. For more information about women's experiences during the First World War, BBC One's new six-part series Women at War: 100 Years of Service is currently airing. The first four episodes are on BBC iPlayer now.
In pictures: The photographs of William Henry Fox Talbot
More than 1,000 early Victorian photographic images captured by William Henry Fox Talbot, the British ‘father of photography’, have been made available to the public in a new catalogue from Bodleian Libraries…
William Henry Fox Talbot (1800-1877) created some of the first photographs ever made and is regarded as the British ‘father of photography’. He also recognised that negatives, with their ability to make multiple prints on paper, would define the central path of photography right through to the digital age. During his career, Talbot and his collaborators created more than 4,500 unique or distinct images; approximately 25,000 of his original negatives and multiple prints from them are known to survive worldwide and are held across a range of international institutions and private collections. Now, the Bodleian Libraries have launched a web-based resource that brings together the complete works of the British photographic pioneer. Currently featuring over 1,000 early Victorian photographic images, the catalogue will grow to 25,000 images by 2018. Here are some highlights… The Open Door, [wide shadow], April 1844 This is one of Talbot’s most iconic and instantly recognisable images, taken at his home Lacock Abbey in April 1844, after many months spent perfecting his technique and the layout of the scene. It was given its title by Talbot's mother, Lady Elisabeth Feilding, who was actively interested in her son’s photographic endeavours. (National Media Museum/Science & Society Picture Library) Articles of Glass [on three shelves], June 1844 This is another of Talbot’s most famous photographs, featuring glassware placed on three shelves which were set up outside. Photographing glass gave Talbot the opportunity to experiment with light and reflection. The glassware depicted in this photograph is held by the Bodleian Libraries - part of the recently-acquired personal archive of Talbot. (Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford) The Fruit Sellers, probably 9 September 1845, Lacock Abbey This posed shot shows Talbot bringing together family, servants and collaborators to make a tableau scene called ‘The Fruit Sellers'. It was taken in the grounds of Lacock Abbey and required the sitters to hold a pose for up to 10 seconds. It was possibly taken by Rev Richard Calvert Jones (1804-1877). (Hans P Kraus, Jr. Fine Photographs) Part of Queens College, Oxford, probably 4 September 1843 This view of Queen’s College, Oxford, looking up to Queen’s Lane, remains largely unchanged today. The church in the background is St Peter’s of the East. The detail and clarity of this negative makes it one of Talbot’s most ‘photo-like’ images, and he selected it to be the first plate in his work 'The Pencil of Nature'. (National Media Museum/Science & Society Picture Library) Lacock Abbey towards Sharington Tower, c. 1844 Talbot took some of his earliest photos in and around his family home of Lacock Abbey, Wiltshire, which is now a National Trust property. (Hans P Kraus, Jr Fine Photographs) Westminster from the Hungerford Market – London across the Thames, June 1841 Taken in June 1841 from Talbot’s flat in Cecil Street, London, this snapshot provides a unique view of Westminster before new buildings and bridges made it the iconic skyline we recognise today. Westminster Abbey (in the distance on the right-hand side) dominates the landscape as it would have done in medieval times. The Houses of Parliament cannot be seen as they burned to the ground on 16 October 1834. The rebuilding of Parliament began in 1840 when the first stone was laid and was not finished until 1858. Even then, ‘Big Ben’ was not installed until 1859. The original Westminster Bridge of 1750, visible on the left of Talbot’s photograph, was replaced in 1854. The Hungerford Market in the foreground was replaced by the Charing Cross Bridge in 1859, transforming the view as photographed by Talbot. (National Media Museum/Science & Society Picture Library) The full catalogue of annotated digitised images of Talbot’s photographs is available to the public at foxtalbot.bodleian.ox.ac.uk.
Where did the famous portrait of Che Guevara come from?
On 5 March 1960, the revolutionary Che Guevara was attending a memorial ceremony for 136 people killed in an explosion in Havana harbour the day before
The French freighter, La Coubre, was carrying munitions from Belgium to Cuba – where the Argentina-born Guevara had been instrumental in putting Fidel Castro in power a year earlier – when it exploded. Castro was quick to blame the Americans in his speech given at the service. Che Guevara: face of the revolution How should history remember Fidel Castro? The photographer Alberto Korda was there, trying to get a snap of all the notable people milling about. Guevara, who was keeping a low profile, had been obscured by other men around him, but suddenly, a gap appeared and Korda was able to get a couple of quick-fire photos. No one appreciated the image at the time – it certainly didn’t immediately strike anyone as iconic or particularly impressive. Korda liked it, however, and put it up in his home. Birth of an iconic image The photo wasn’t even published abroad until August 1967, when Che Guevara’s last revolutionary message “Create Two, Three, Many Vietnams” was broadcast as he fought in Bolivia. Two months later, Guevara was shot by Bolivian high command. This solidified his legacy as a revolutionary martyr. So when leftist Italian publisher, Giangiacomo Feltrinelli, visited Korda, he was drawn to this previously unseen photo and bought a print. Back in Europe, he started circulating the image of Guevara. Its fame spread, becoming known as Guerrillero Heroico or The Heroic Guerrilla Fighter. The Irish artist Jim Fitzpatrick was inspired to develop it into a high contrast drawing. Thus the iconic image we know today was born. Fitzpatrick told the BBC he was “Determined that the image should receive the broadest possible circulation” so that Guevara’s name will “never die”. It is perhaps ironic that one of the most commercialised capitalist images is of a man who fought bitterly against capitalism, and hated all it stood for. This article was taken from BBC History Revealed magazine
5 photographs that (you didn’t know) changed everything
Five seemingly ordinary photographs that transformed the world as we know it…
In BBC Radio 3's February 2015 show The Essay: The Five Photographs That (You Didn’t Know) Changed Everything, experts in photographic history revealed the significance of five images dating from the 19th century – from an 1866 photo of a butcher taken in Australia that reformed British law, to an aerial image that changed the spaces we live in. Here, writing for History Extra, five experts explore the little-known photographs that transformed the fields of medicine, architecture, astronomy, law and cultural history. Anna Bertha’s hand by Kelley Wilder, De Montfort University X-ray images have become so much a feature of our daily lives that we don’t really think of them as photographs. And there is one that changed everything, revolutionising the way we practise medicine, archaeology and astronomy. And when the first X-ray was produced, it was shocking and quite unfathomable. Step into the shoes of Anna Bertha Röntgen, the first X-ray subject: in her husband’s university laboratory she placed her hand between covered tube and a paper-wrapped photographic glass plate. Little did she know it was about to become the most famous hand in physics. Conrad Wilhelm Röntgen took the X-ray photograph of Anna’s hand on 22 December 1895. Instead of the blacks and whites of modern X-rays, the skeleton is picked out in browns, but it clearly shows how the rays penetrate the soft tissue to show the bones. Until the X-ray came along, doctors could only see what was going on inside their patients by taking the drastic step of cutting them open. X-ray promised to change all that. Less than a year after Dr John Macintyre had verified Röntgen’s findings he opened an X-ray unit at Glasgow’s Royal Infirmary – the first of what we today call the ‘radiology department’. But the real excitement around the announcement of X-ray photography was around the striptease and titillation it appeared to promise. Newspapers railed against the revolting indecency of the X-ray. Humorous poems were written, like this one that appeared in Electrical Review in April 1896: The Roentgen Rays, the Roentgen Rays, What is this craze? The Town’s ablaze with the new phase of X-ray’s ways. I’m full of daze, Shock and amaze, For now-a-days I hear they’ll gaze Thro’ cloak and gown – and even stays, These naughty, naughty Roentgen Rays. Today we associate X-ray photographs more with the contents of our baggage than with our bones. But both are seen in terms defined by a picture taken 120 years ago – the X-ray photograph of Anna Bertha’s hand. Kelley Wilder is reader in photographic history at De Montfort University, Leicester. This episode of The Essay aired on Monday 16 February. To listen on BBC iPlayer, click here. The Nebula in Orion by Omar Nasim, the University of Kent This photograph defied the imagination, and raised questions not just about the size of the universe, but about the very origins of humanity. M42 was the first celestial nebula [an interstellar cloud comprising dust, helium, hydrogen and other ionized gases] ever to be photographed. It was taken by Dr Henry Draper, a New York amateur astronomer, on 30 September 1880. The photograph is made up of many shades of grey, with dark black regions in the margins, and bright, white splotches, especially near the middle. The grey patches are gaseous material; the black regions, space; and the bright white spots are over-exposed stars. The photograph has a misty, spectral character, and the more you look, the more you see. Draper’s photograph was special because it showed, in the words of late 19th-century scientists, ‘cosmic dust’, ‘primordial matter’ – the formless materials out of which suns and planets are spun. It was a picture of deep space and deep time, showing the raw materials that formed our solar system. In From Nebula to Man, published in 1905, the author Henry Knipe argued that if nebulous material constituted the earth, then human beings too must be composed of the same. Yes, the nebulae were conceived as part of an evolutionary worldview. At the end of the 18th century, some people believed that the many different shapes nebulae took represented different stages in their evolution. Draper’s photograph changed everything – firstly by showing how one could practically picture vast celestial objects. Secondly, by placing human beings in a much larger universal history. He provided us with the first portrait of ourselves in another place and another time. Omar Nasim is a history lecturer at the University of Kent. This episode of The Essay aired on Tuesday 17 February. To listen on BBC iPlayer, click here. The Dogon by Jeanne Haffner, Harvard University How do we know to make connections between society and space? Is it instinctual, or is it a product of history? I believe it’s the latter, and this bird's-eye photograph of the Dogon tribe working their fields in Mali, taken by the French Africanist Marcel Griaule in the mid-1930s, explains how. At first glance, it’s unremarkable: there’s no dramatic event being portrayed, and it’s not even artistic. The photo is black and white, and gives a bird's-eye perspective of African farmers in their fields. The focus of the photograph is the shape of their agricultural fields as seen from above, and the perspective means we can see how the land’s been divided up, resulting in a kind of checkerboard pattern – rather like a patchwork quilt. Griaule had learned about aerial photography while serving as an aerial reconnaissance officer during the First World War. After the war, he used the skills he’d learned in his studies – taking photographs while flying over ethnic regions, and combining the information he gleaned from them with an analysis of objects found on the ground. Griaule came to believe that aerial photographs were essential to his fieldwork; they yielded information about local culture that he couldn’t get in any other way. The group that caught Griaule's attention was the ethnic group, the Dogon. He noticed that the checkerboard pattern featured in his photograph was reproduced everywhere in their villages. He concluded that it served to tie the various spheres of Dogon life together within the group’s unconscious. And, despite their poverty, this sense of connection between the individual and the group made the people happy. Inspired by the Dogon, architects and urban sociologists started to call for more humanistic approaches to the built environment. Today, they continue to directly influence trends in urban planning and architecture, with the importance of people feeling connected to their environment being widely acknowledged: low-rise dwellings are preferred to high-rise, pedestrian and bike-friendly spaces are increasingly accommodated, and an appreciation of history and memory are invoked. Of course, these efforts aren’t always successful, but no planner today would deny the need to create a sense of place, even if they may debate how best to do it. The lesson Griaule learned from this photo is as relevant now as it was in the 1930s. It might be easy to literally see the whole picture from above, but we will always need to be challenged if we are going to spot what really matters in our human story on the ground. Jeanne Haffner is a lecturer in the Department of History and Science at Harvard University. This episode of The Essay aired on Wednesday 18 February. To listen on BBC iPlayer, click here. The Broom cottages by Elizabeth Edwards, De Montfort University A few years ago, Wikipedia launched Wiki Loves Monuments to encourage amateur photographers to upload their images of heritage sites. Now an annual competition, it is part of a global project that has attracted more than a million image uploads. But the idea of asking people to take pictures of historical places and buildings isn’t new. It emerged in the late 19th century, when photography was catching on as a hobby, and when ideas were also developing about what Britain’s shared cultural heritage might look like. The photograph featured here stands for a mass of such photographs. It was taken in 1885 in Broom, a village on the Warwickshire/Worcestershire border. It shows a row of humble cottages: a mass of old timbers, messy thatched roofs and flaking plaster. It has flat grey/brown tones, and was taken with a large wooden and brass camera using glass negative – about 6 by 8 inches in size. It’s an ordinary-looking photograph that hides its real significance: the idea that such a building was worth recording for posterity. An everyday structure, yet part of the nation’s history. The photograph was taken by a man called William Jerome Harrison, a Midlands schoolmaster who believed in the power of photography, to create a systematic record that could give us a “true picture of the present”. The appeal of the Broom cottages was not they were old and picturesque, but that they were typical of the area in their style and in the materials used to build them. They carried with them the experiences and activities of past generations. This was their fascination, and the photograph was a document of it all. What I think makes this photograph a game-changer is that it represents a self-conscious effort to bring these cottages into the fold of what we now recognise as ‘architectural and cultural heritage’. Harrison was passionate about how photography and history might join forces. He urged amateur photographers everywhere to follow his example and to record ancient buildings, churches, houses, customs, landscapes, and events. In this digital age we take sharing photographs completely for granted, but sharing was key to Harrison’s pioneering agenda. Amateur photographers were encouraged not to hoard their photographs but to deposit prints in local libraries and museums where they could be organised and stored for everybody’s benefit. History could belong to everyone. Elizabeth Edwards is a research professor of photographic history at De Montfort University, Leicester. This episode of The Essay aired on Thursday 19 February. To listen on BBC iPlayer, click here. The Tichborne Claimant by Jennifer Tucker, Wesleyan University Sometimes, a photograph comes along that really gets people talking. It might not be an award-winning photo of a dramatic event, or a portrait of a famous figure. It might not even be beautiful or well composed. But sometimes even a mundane photograph can have a powerful and lasting historical impact. This is the story of one such photograph – a picture that not only changed the life of the man it showed, but also set in motion the longest and most expensive trial in British legal history, and sparked a national debate over the role of photography as evidence in a court of law. The photo was taken in 1866 in the Australian town of Wagga Wagga. It depicts a middle-aged man sitting on a bench with his back against a rough wooden fence, his hands clasped together in his lap. He is wearing working clothes typical of his occupation as a stockman and butcher, his expression is slightly worried, his brows furrowed. The man was living under the alias ‘Tom Castro’, though he was born as Arthur Orton in the East End of London. He emigrated to Australia in 1852 to start a new life. He had the photo taken after he noticed an advertisement placed by a missing persons agency in Sydney seeking the whereabouts of one Sir Roger Tichborne, heir to an English fortune, who had disappeared off the coast of Brazil 10 years before. The advert was placed by his mother, Dowager Lady Henriette Tichborne. Orton wrote to her informing her that he was her long lost son. She requested “positive proof”, hence the photograph. The picture convinced Lady Tichborne that it was indeed her son. With her financial support, Orton sailed to Europe. Empowered by her money (which he enjoyed until she died around a year later), he launched an inheritance claim against the rest of the Tichborne family. To try to settle the question of the claimant’s identity, the court ordered lawyers on both sides to travel to South America and Australia to gather testimony. They interviewed shepherds, cattle rustlers and female domestic servants. Some recognised the person in the Wagga photo as Tom Castro (Orton’s alias), and some did not. Their testimony was inconclusive. Eventually the claimant failed to convince the jury that he was Sir Roger Tichborne, and his suit was denied. He was then tried for perjury in the Court of the Queen’s Bench. The jury’s verdict finally came down in March 1874: guilty. Orton was sentenced to 14 years hard labour – breaking stones in Dartmoor. But his story does not end with his sentencing. The Tichborne claimant had become a popular symbol that generated a mass movement calling for his release. Admittedly it was a rather bizarre democratic campaign: a working class movement aimed at restoring a man to the aristocracy. Yet it became a rallying point, channelling grievances from a myriad of reform groups, and it sowed the seeds of political and social transformations that would bear fruit in the progress of organised labour, feminism, and a other urban, legal and democratic reforms. This photograph makes us wonder: is photography a tool of empowerment, or of surveillance and control? Can it be used to establish truth from fiction? These questions are still with us today, and they were presented to us for the first time in an 1863 photograph of a slaughterman from Wagga Wagga. Jennifer Tucker is associate professor of history and science in society at Wesleyan University, USA. This episode of The Essay aired on Friday 20 February. To listen, click here. This article was first published by History Extra in February 2015.
In pictures: early Victorian photography
An exhibition exploring one of the earliest forms of paper photography – salt prints – opens at Tate Britain this month, with some 90 rare examples on show. Invented by William Henry Fox Talbot in the mid-19th century, the salt print technique involved soaking paper in silver iodide salts to register a negative image that, when photographed again, created permanent paper positives. The works displayed are among the few salt prints that survive.
Cantinière [woman attached to a military regiment], by Roger Fenton, 1855 © Wilson Centre for Photography Base of the Obelisk, by James Robertson, c1854 © Wilson Centre for Photography Mother and Son, by Jean-Baptiste Frenet, 1855 © Wilson Centre for Photography Fruit Seller, by George Kendall Warren, 1860 © Wilson Centre for Photography The Fruitsellers, by Calvert Jones, 1843 © Wilson Centre for Photography Elizabeth Rigby, later Lady Eastlake, with Cupid Statuette, by Hill & Adamson, c1845 © Wilson Centre for Photography Newhaven fishermen, by Hill and Adamson, 1844 © Wilson Centre for Photography William Morton, One of Dr. Kanes’s Men, by John S. Johnston, c1857 © Wilson Centre for Photography Salt and Silver: Early Photography 1840–1860 is on show at Tate Britain, London from 25 February–7 June 2015. Find out more at www.tate.org.uk