During the First World War, roughly three different groups of photographers were active. There were official photographers (commissioned by various governments or militaries) and commercial photographers (primarily motivated by profit) (Tucker et. al 10-11). The third group—which first became prominent in the First World War—was the servicemen themselves, who used portable, roll-film cameras such as the Vest Pocket Kodak (Lenman n.p.). The lines between the three groups often blurred: commercial photographers, because of their skill, were often hired as official photographers (Taylor 10-11). Furthermore, due to extraordinary demand for photographs and a British ban on (official and commercial) photography before 1916, the press eagerly paid for any photographs it could get, including those from soldiers at the front (14). This particular photograph, because it is stereoscopic, was most likely taken by a commercial photographer. Commercial photographers generally filled two needs during wartime: to take portraits of soldiers and their loved ones
as keepsakes and to relate current events to the homefront (20).

This stereo card arguably fulfills both roles in that it aims to both memorialize the soldiers and provide an account of life in the trenches. The photograph is close enough that one can recognize individual faces, privileging rather than erasing or devaluing individual identity even as the individual forms a part of the collective (the group of soldiers). This stereograph, unlike many other images of war, depicts soldiers preparing for battle rather than a war-torn landscape or its bloody aftermath. Thus the stereograph draws attention to the war’s human cost, preserving an image of the soldiers even as it foretells their loss (the implication being that many, if not all, of them will not survive). The text on the stereo card’s back, however, is concerned with the general conditions of a soldier’s life: it references No Man’s Land, the Christmas Truce, and the Belgian population. These descriptions are abstract and lack individuality, providing an overview rather than a subjective account. This abstraction may also suggest that the author of the text was never at the front himself.

Sources and Further Reading:

Lenman, Robin. “war photography.” The Oxford Companion to the Photograph : Oxford University Press, 2005. Web. 4 Mar. 2015.

Tucker, Anne, Will Michels and Natalie Zelt. War/photography: Images of Armed Conflict and Its Aftermath. Houston : New Haven: Museum of Fine Arts, Houston ; distributed by Yale University Press, 2012. Print.

For the most part, the stereo card’s tone is neutral when describing Belgium and its citizens, listing statistics about its population and official languages. However, the stereo card also references the “Rape of Belgium”—a historical term used to describe the treatment of citizens in occupied Belgium during the First World War (“No nation in this war has suffered as [Belgium] has”). In August, 1914, Germany marched through Belgium in an attempt to flank the French defense, despite the fact that Belgium declared itself neutral (Kramer 7). German soldiers, inexperienced and spooked by rumours of francs-tireurs (civilian sharpshooters) everywhere, executed thousands of civilians and burned whole towns and villages in an attempt to quell resistance (Fleming 52-4; Kramer 10-11) and hold citizens “collectively culpable” (Kramer 16).

In the early years of the war, Britain used the Rape of Belgium for its own propaganda and political purposes. Belgium was a major keystone of British war propaganda, which characterized Britain’s entry into the war as one “to defend small, democratic, neutral countries against autocracy and its supposed by-product, militarism” (Fleming 50). However, though recent scholarship confirms the atrocities of the German occupation, Fleming notes that the “poor little Belgium” narrative is undermined by Belgium’s own atrocities in the Congo and its dubious claim to neutrality (49-50). This political narrative spurred recruitment, anti-German sentiment and attempts to persuade the then-neutral United States to join the war (45-6). Later events, such as the sinking of the Lusitania (55-56) and the Bryce report (52-55), eventually pushed the United States to declare war against Germany in 1917.

However, one cannot ignore the influence of British censorship and propaganda in these cases: Britain cut off any direct communication between Germany and the United States and censored news coming out of Berlin, ensuring that news of the war would be one-sided (44-45). Furthermore, the Bryce report contained sensationalized—and likely fabricated—accounts of German violence in addition to its more accurate descriptions (Fleming 55).

Sources and Further Reading:

Fighting Words and Images Representing War across the Disciplines. Ed. Stephan Jaeger, Elena V. Baraban, and Adam Muller. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2012. Print.

Fleming, Thomas J. The Illusion of Victory: America in World War I. New York: Basic Books, 2003. Print.

Kramer, Alan. Dynamic of Destruction: Culture and Mass Killing in the First World War. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007. Web. 17 Feb. 2015.

Zuckerman, Larry. The Rape of Belgium: The Untold Story of World War I. New York: New York University Press, 2004. Print.

This is a reference to the “Christmas Truce”—a widespread, unofficial, and temporary ceasefire that took place along the Western Front between Allied and German forces around Christmas time, 1914. Soldiers from both sides talked, sang, exchanged gifts, and buried their dead in joint ceremonies (Eksteins 110-111). In some places, there were even friendly football (soccer) matches between British and German troops—though concerns about the cratered land and possible embellishment in some accounts make it hard to determine exact details (Eksteins 113; Dash n.p.). In some places, the truce lasted well into January (Eksteins 114), while in others, there was no truce at all (Dash n.p.). High command on both sides reacted negatively and discouraged any further “fraternization” (Ashe 32-3).

Perhaps more interesting than the event itself is how the Christmas Truce endures in the public imagination. In wartime, news of the event was generally withheld from official accounts (Eksteins 114) and survives mostly in soldiers’ letters and diaries (95-7). War propaganda, which painted the enemy as barbarians “beyond the pale, incapable of such normal human emotions as compassion and friendship” and some people found the Truce difficult to believe (98). The stereo card certainly emphasizes its unusualness by contrasting it to the (albeit abstractly described) horrors of trench warfare.

In modern times, we memorialize—or even mythologize—the Truce for its romantic and sentimental value. The Christmas Truce has become a hopeful narrative of how peace and goodwill can triumph even in extraordinarily difficult circumstances—one blog article calls it “a Victory for Human Kindness” (Brown 1). More recently, Sainsbury’s, a British grocery store chain, dramatized the event in a Christmas ad. The ad has sparked controversy (Associated Press), with some arguing that it sanitizes the horrors of the First World War and exploits the results for profit. Thus, the issue of what narratives to tell about history, and to what ends we use them, continues to be relevant.

Sources and Further Reading:

Ashworth, Tony. Trench Warfare, 1914-1918: The Live and Let Live System. New York, N.Y: Holmes & Meier, 1980. Print.

Eksteins, Modris. Rites of Spring: The Great War and the Birth of the Modern Age. 1st ed. Toronto: Lester & Orpen Dennys, 1989. Print.

Sainsbury’s. “Sainsbury’s OFFICIAL Christmas 2014 Ad.” Online video clip. YouTube. YouTube, 12 Nov. 2014. 17 Feb. 2015. Available on YouTube

Sainsbury’s.”Sainsbury’s Christmas – The story behind our Christmas ad.” Online video clip. YouTube. YouTube, 12 Nov. 2014. 17 Feb. 2015. Available on YouTube

The Associated Press. “Grocery Chain’s Christmas Ad Stirs Tears, Outrage.” The New York Times 21 Nov. 2014. NYTimes.com. Web. 17 Feb. 2015. Available online

Unlike the stereograph of the Johnstown Flood, this stereograph confronts the human cost of the Khodinsky Plain Panic head-on. Though the circumstances of each event are different (ease of access to the site, man-made vs. natural disaster), the attention that Kilburn pays to the victims is nevertheless remarkable. The photograph was taken in such a way that individual faces and features , including what could be bloodstains on the woman’s face near the photograph’s centre, are clearly visible and immediately draw the eye to them.

Compared to a different stereograph from the same photographer, this stereograph omits the faces of those standing around the bodies, as well the stalls and sky in the background. Where the former offered some negative space in which to let the eye rest, the latter immerses the viewer while denying any such escape. The three-dimensional effect further enhances this immersion: the way the bodies overlap (a phenomena called occlusion) heighten the illusion of depth when the stereo card is viewed in 3D (Crary 124-5). Thus, the pile of bodies would seem to to recede further and further into the distance, emphasizing their sheer scale in a way that could not be accomplished with 2D photography.

These immersive techniques, when combined with such unpleasant subject matter, seem far from the earlier understanding of stereography as a pleasing, educational, and passive artform for its audience. If the stereograph is “pleasing,” it would not be pleasure in the traditional sense, and one might question whether it would be voyeuristic or sympathetic. If the stereograph is educational, does it seek to educate viewers about a less idealistic side of humanity rather than the cultural and intellectual refinement that David Brewster envisioned? Does the stereograph promote a passive experience that preserves the boundary between viewer and the viewed, or seek to close the gap through immersion?

Crary, Jonathan. Techniques of the Observer: On Vision and Modernity in the Nineteenth Century. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 1990. Print.

For the Western audience that would have viewed the stereo card, it would have nicely complemented the newspaper articles covering the event. The stereo card individualizes the victims in a way the newspapers often do not, and it is easier to imagine the human cost of the disaster with a visual aid rather than simply facts and figures. The stereo card seems more interested in preserving the initial shock of the event rather than detailing its causes or aftermath, though Western audiences were likely interested in the latter too.

News coverage, both within and outside Russia, concerned itself with the question of responsibility for the event. Although coverage varied in their sympathy (or lack thereof) towards the mob, Baker writes that it was “perhaps, inevitable, in an autocratic regime, that responsibility for any popular disaster would eventually be laid at the door of the authorities that had organised it” (8). Though Western news articles were (at least initially) sympathetic towards Tzar Nicholas II, emphasizing his sorrow and subsequent charitable actions (Sydney Herald; Baker 23), Baker reveals that the Khodynka tragedy and its aftermath shook Russian confidence in royal authority and “provoked the first strains of popular hostility towards Nicholas II” (38-39). Though Nicholas made hospital rounds and attended a special mourning service, he did not cancel his appearance at a ball later that evening — a decision that caused some controversy—though several accounts note that he looked uncomfortable throughout the event (16-19). Some critics and historians interpret this decision as an attempt to appease his family and the foreign dignitaries that had travelled long distances to celebrate his coronation (Baker 19-21; Warth 27-28). The coronation celebration, intended to be “an emblem of future prosperity” (Baker 2), cast a shadow on Nicholas’s reign and remains one of its most memorable events—especially considering his eventual forced abdication and execution following the Russian Revolution.

Sources and Further Reading:

“THE MOSCOW DISASTER. PANIC AT THE FETES. THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE TRAMPLED TO DEATH. TERRIBLE SCENES. [BY TELEGRAPH.] (FROM OUR CORRESPONDENT.) ALBANY, Saturday.” The Sydney Morning Herald 6 July 1896: 5. Web. Available online.

Baker, Helen. “Monarchy Discredited? Reactions to the Khodynka Coronation Catastrophe of 1896.” 16.1 (2003): 1–46. Web. Available online.

Warth, Robert D. Nicholas II: The Life and Reign of Russia’s Last Monarch. Westport, Conn: Praeger, 1997. Print.

On May 31^st, 1899, a devastating flood struck Johnstown, Pennsylvania and the surrounding area whose immediate causes were torrential rain and the collapse of the South Forks Dam. The flood killed 2209 people (Allen 1) and caused millions of dollars in property damage at a time when the average weekly wage was $10 (Centennial A18). When the wave struck the Pennsylvania Railroad viaduct (pictured here), much of the debris accumulated there and created a whirlpool (Himmelwright 446). The pile later caught fire, killing more people (Centennial A18).

The Johnstown Flood became an event of great national interest. McCullough describes how the Pittsburgh Gazette “was selling its editions so fast that it had to reduce its page size temporarily so as not to run out of paper. Everywhere, people were talking of little else” (204). The coverage was not always factually accurate; for example, the reported death toll initially varied between 100 and 10 000, despite there being “no firsthand facts to go on” at the time (203). Though the inaccuracies were partly due to the difficulty of discerning truth in a disaster’s aftermath, they were also influenced by commercial or political motivations or biases. Many sensational stories emphasized the horror and contained “distortions, wild exaggerations and outright nonsense” (220). These stories seem exploitative in their desire to titillate or entertain rather than inform.

Nevertheless, if an emotional response was the ultimate goal, there may also have been more positive consequences. Johnstown benefited from many charitable donations and was also the first real test of the American Red Cross (229-231). Such stories created villains as well: many of the papers (perhaps rightly) blamed the South Forks Fishing Club, whose millionaire members built the dam for their private resort with perhaps less than stringent standards (246-8). Several papers also described “Huns” (East European immigrants) who stole jewellery off flood victims—anecdotes that were racially prejudiced and untrue (210-212).

Sources and Further Reading:

Allen, Jean. “Remembering Johnstown’s Flood Victims.” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette 2 Jun. 2002: E2. ProQuest. Web. 5 Jan. 2015.

“Johnstown Marks Flood Centennial: City Leaders Say Anniversary Is a Time to Take Pride in Overcoming Adversity.” New York Times 1 Jun. 1989: A18. ProQuest. Web. 5 Jan 2015.

McCullough, David G. The Johnstown Flood. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1968. Print.

Walker, James H. The Johnstown Horror!!! or Valley of Death. Philadelphia: National Publishing Company, 1889. Print. Available on Project Gutenberg

In “Illustrating the Accident,” Fyfe contrasts the industrial picturesque—a visual genre that focused on the railway’s “most placid moments and idealized features—with its “uncanny after-image”: the “catastrophic picturesque” (64). Fyfe describes the catastrophic picturesque as “engaged in covering up the disturbances of industrial modernity with an aesthetic that paradoxically opens them up to view” (63-4). That is, the catastrophic picturesque, as a visual strategy, soothes anxiety over deadly railway accidents while simultaneously revealing a fascination for them.

Though Fyfe aligns photography with the slow demise of the catastrophic picturesque (79-80), this stereograph shares some of the same visual characteristics and can be seen as a transitional piece. Several different forms of photography and illustration were popular and co-existed during the 19 ^th century, such that it is perhaps more useful to think of the period in terms of multiple “photographies” or illustrative techniques rather than in monolithic terms (Clayton 12-22). It is unsurprising that visual media might borrow or appropriate visual techniques from other genres.

The stereograph, for example, was taken from a high vantage point that allows the viewer to survey the damage below—a characteristic that the catastrophic picturesque used to “encourage [viewers] to see illustrations as aesthetic objects, and to examine illustrations of disasters from a safe, contemplative remove” (Fyfe 79-80). Furthermore, if the “blend of scenery and wreckage” characterizes the catastrophic picturesque (Fyfe 81), then the wreckage in this stereograph becomes the scenery. Broken, jumbled, and splintered pieces of wood—alienated from the recognizable objects they once were—are what form the “landscape.” Lastly, Fyfe describes the catastrophic picturesque as a way to reconstruct or even replace the accident as experience (79). Since the picturesque “offer[s] pictures in place if the ‘experience’ they claimed to deliver,” then stereography—whose champions exploited its 3D effect for their experiential claims—is an especially fitting medium for this visual genre.

Sources and Further Reading:

Clayton, Owen. Literature and Photography in Transition, 1850-1915. Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire ; New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015.Print.

Fyfe, Paul. “Illustrating the Accident: Railways and the Catastrophic Picturesque in The Illustrated London News.” Victorian Periodicals Review. 46.1 (2013): 61–91. Project MUSE. Web. 20 Feb. 2015. Available online

Towards the end of the 19^th century, a new photographic movement was in its infant stages—social documentary photography. Technological developments, such as the arrival of the first Kodak camera, increasingly made it cheaper, faster and easier to produce photographs. The number of photographers (amateur or hobbyist, especially) and audiences increased, along with an increased interest in social issues. Accompanying these changes was a shift in how people viewed photography as a medium: where before, photographs were considered to be—above all—objective and informative, the rise of Pictorialism and social documentary photography promoted artistic or affective values (Rosenblum 340). In particular, social documentary photography, as an approach, was interested in “imbu[ing] facts with feeling”—thus combining informative and artistic values (341). Another characteristic of the social documentary approach was its commitment to moral or “humanistic” values—to “ideals of dignity” and “the right to decent conditions of living and work” (341).

Although this stereograph may share some aspects of social documentary photography, it does not fit neatly into this category. The stereograph is certainly concerned with the social cost of the disaster: Barker deems the event a “calamity” rather than simply a “flood” and includes human figures in the act of searching for bodies. However, the stereograph is also concerned with nature’s power. It was taken from a relatively high angle and emphasizes the sheer scale of the destruction that dwarves the humans pictured rather than overtly focus on the people themselves. Moreover, it would be difficult to argue the stereograph is committed to humanistic values or that it calls for action—two hallmarks of social documentary photography. It is difficult to speculate about the intent or approach of the photographer. As Rosenblum notes, “in themselves images could not necessarily be counted on to convey specific meanings…how they were perceived often depended on the outlook and social bias of the viewer” (353). As with all media, it is ultimately reductive to ascribe a singular purpose to a work of art at the exclusion of others. But the questions such photographs raised in the 19^th century about how documentary purposes, Art or aesthetic ideals, and ethics intersect still persist today.

Sources and Further Reading:

Lindsay, David. “The Kodak Camera Starts a Craze.” PBS.org, n.d. Public Broadcasting Service (PBS). Web. 5 Jan. 2015. Available online

Newhall, Beaumont. “Documentary Approach to Photography.” Parnassus 10.3 (1938): 3–6. JSTOR. Web. 3 Jan. 2015. Available on JSTOR

Rosenblum, Naomi. A World History of Photography. 4th ed. New York: Abbeville Press Publishers, 2007. Print.