What have those eyes seen?
This is a photo i took of an amazing book - The Faces of World War 1. I cannot recommend it enough. It is full of such amazing images. I have spent hours studying it. The following is a review i pinched off of Amazon by Ann Thomas who describes it much better than i could.
There have been other books of photos of World War 1, and one might expect to see the same old images - but this is a collection of many unfamiliar, previously unseen photos - of subjects ranging from the Western Front, Gallipoli, the home front, and behind the lines - and both before, during and after the war.
The large format lends itself to the often panoramic images - and also allows you to see in detail extraordinary and haunting portraits - the 'faces' after which the book is named. It's a collection to please the expert and the interested browser alike - a WWI buff will appreciate the precisely captioned battle scenes - but any reader will feel the impact of the personal quotations which accompany many images - they add an extraordinary dimension to one's understanding of life and conditions in the trenches. It's an immensely moving photo-record, but my heart was particularly wrenched by the three Australian brothers who all died in one two-day attack, the home images of the average, working-class man who went to fight for king and country... not the Eton toffs, but the desperately poor. The images depict a world of contrasts, both in Britain and in Germany - but when it came down to it, all the men at the front were in the same boat, and returned after the conflict to their bleak lives with their terrible disfigurements, mental scars and the memory of lost comrades.
- 0
- 0
- Canon EOS 400D DIGITAL
- 1/2
- f/5.6
- 55mm
- 800
Comments
Sign in or get an account to comment.