I started off looking into War Photographers and came across the name of Olive Edis. Researching more I learned that she was more than just a War Photographer who in 1918, was commissioned by the Imperial War Museum to photograph a women’s war role/work in Europe. (manly France and Belgium 1918)
This made her the first British woman to be commissioned as an official war artist, and only the 5th official photographer to visit Europe to cover WW1.
Many of these photographs, would have been taken using a large glass-plate camera. These camera's would have been heavy to transport and the negatives delicate.
I find these images beautiful in the sense of the detail and light. I like the fact that a moment in time is captured and how we can learn different things about the images. The clothes and fashion the technology or lack of. The hospital beds being so close together and the conditions the soldiers or wounded had to endure etc. I wonder how long it took Edis to decide the correct composition to get the best outcome. How well did she get to know the people in the images and if they were happy enough to be photographed?
I believe she also kept a diary or her travels. While detailing accounts of the journey and the effect of war she recorded the beginnings of the post-war reconstruction. As well as the help being given to the large numbers of desperate, displaced people.
At this time being a female photographer would have been rare, not to mention one travelling around Europe detailing the account of war.
This trip clearly illustrates the changes in the role of women in British society that occurred as a result of the war.
If however, you look at another man photographer who worked in the same time frame, you'll find a different picture of war altogether
Ernest Brooks, (Lieutenant)
First Offical Officer and probably the best known. Brooks was known to sometimes set up scenes of the men in action, but also took images during the action. Many of his images did have to be censored. Quote "His work was noted as being characterised by a "conscious seeking after a publishable photograph",
A man on the front line and one with nerve nevertheless. His work of the silhouette scene became famous. The scenes that show soldiers walking along a ridge against the light were used to highlight the unknown individual soldiers of the war. I feel this works to illustrate the anonymous heroes of the war. Appropriate really looking back for a historical point of view.
From these two artist's alone you can see the different conditions the male and female photographers lived. The woman I feel was more protected and safe zoned.
The Daily Mirror paper, did try to set up a newspaper months before this war. The paper was to be images for women by women. A radical and costly gamble that then left the paper in financial losses.
Do you think the editor thought that women being home carers or illiterate needed a paper that gave a basic understanding of the world, from a womens point of view? Or did/would it just fill it with the selling items of the day for the home.
Propaganda images also maybe, to help shout the cause on every level. Men, women and children and get support from backgrounds of everyone's level.. either way a change in women's role and priority thinking.
After the fall in sales the papers editor Alfred Harmsworth did realise the importance and popularity of the pictorial journal - and so this became the first photographic daily paper. The kind of paper were used to reading today .
More facts about Olive Edis from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olive_Edis
- took up photography in 1900, after being given her first camera in 1900 by her cousin Caroline
- successful business woman who, throughout her career, owned several studios in London and East Anglia
- one of the first women to adopt the autochrome process professionally
- was commissioned to create advertising photographs for the Canadian Pacific Railway and her autochromes of this trip to Canada are believed to be some of the earliest colour photographs of that country.
- if she felt one side of the photograph was too dark she would paint the negative with pigment to make it lighter
- Edis photographed many influential figures of early 20th century society
- first women to be accepted as a Fellow of the Royal Photographic Society
https://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205194690
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/photographys-era-of-glass-plate-negatives/
https://oliveedisproject.wordpress.com/about-olive-edis/
http://ww1photos.mirror.co.uk/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernest_Brooks_(photographer)
ernest brooks war photographer- google images
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