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By the time World War I broke out the role of postcards as a news source was already well-established. Photographers produced thousands of images about the war, and publishers marketed them as quickly as they could. The easiest thing to produce, of course, was pictures of wreckage, and these were churned by the millions. No town in northern France escaped the photographers' eyes. Others sought to document the human side of the war, and the new technologies with which it was being fought.
Though it would be hard to say whether the anonymous photographers who supplied these images thought of themselves as photojournalists, their work is a kind of photojournalism none the less. The urge to create a visual document of the war is clear.
Indeed, many of the images echo the themes and issues that face photojournalism today. There is photo manipulation - the battle scene from Marne feels suspiciously like a composite; and commercialization - the image of the damage to the cathedral at Reims is treated like a typical tourist card.
There is also a not-so-small commitment to honesty - the anguish of the captured Germans on the French-published card from the battle of Vaux is palpable; and many of the cards were originally issued as parts of voluminous series. The sets here contains three images from a catalogue of 300 cards published by London's Daily Mail newspaper on the British Army and its exploits. If the entire catalogue could ever be assembled, it would probably feel like an extended photo-essay serving as a comprehensive document of "The Great War". |
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