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Journal of Visual Culture
http://vcu.sagepub.com/content/9/3/370
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DOI: 10.1177/1470412910380343
2010 9: 370 Journal of Visual Culture
Thierry Gervais
Witness to War: The Uses of Photography in the Illustrated Press, 1855-1904
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Gervais Witness to War 381
Gustave Babin (1905) continued to write about this change in the representation
of war and, in his paper published at the end of the war, compared paintings of
the preceding century to recently produced photographs:
Where are the great battles painted by Wouwerman Or the theatrical
compositions in which Grard or Gros immortalized the chapters of the
imperial saga, according to the style decreed by the instructor Our
impressions of war were still based on the panoramas that multiplied
after the war of 18701871 and on the picturesque scenes of Neuville or
Detaille. (p. 167)
Then, Babin cuts to the chase:
War today is as this: several specks smoking in the sky in the distance, men
sliding on their stomachs, cautious and taking advantage of each mound of
dirt to shelter themselves. Its part of a series of small incidents one next to
the other that say war. Its in this way that we experience a battle where
100,000 soldiers disappear. (p. 167)
In this way, Babin described how the battle, that very noble subject of historical
painting, was no longer represented in a single heroic composition, but in a
sequence of details. In other words, during the RussoJapanese War, the
illustrators synthetic tableaux of battles made way for an analytical layout of
Jimmy Hares photographs, one created by editors who took into consideration
the methods and styles of the medium.
Between the Transvaal War (18991902) and the RussoJapanese conict
(19045), the number of images of war increased in LIllustration. From that time
forward, the sheer number of images placed photography on an equal footing
with the established aesthetic of drawings in the newspaper.
17
The publication
of narrative sequences of photographs corresponded to the revitalization of
journalistic practices. The demonstrative character of Hares photographic
series dovetailed with the reporters attempts at investigation,
18
suggesting an
analysis of conict and the attempt to show, through images, the brutality of the
battles. Further photographic spreads manifested the shifting narrative of news
reporting from the image to the newspaper page: the story of war was no longer
told through one large, dramatic, and well-composed drawing, but through a
photographic sequence constructed on the page. Thus, editors of the journal
allocated meaning to a body of work whose every element would otherwise have
appeared merely as a detail a small incident to use Babins words difcult for
the readers to understand.
Images of the Crimean and the RussoJapanese Wars exemplify the presss
concerns with the photographic medium. First, the formal characteristics of
Fentons photographs were altered, in their engraved form, in order to bring
them in line with the rules of the picturesque. Later, when the halftone process
allowed photographs to be directly reproduced, editors did not nd the alleged
authenticity of the pictures a strong enough factor to publish them as individual
images. At the beginning of the 20th century, LIllustration layouts incorporating
382 journal of visual culture 9(3)
Hares pictures certainly demonstrated how a single photograph was not
considered adequate to convey the story of an event.
Since the 1850s, photography has been categorized as an intrinsically honest
medium that has brought the reader closer to the news. In effect, before Babin,
Adolphe Joanne (1850) described engravings from photographs published
in LIllustration in the 1850s as a series of facts and irrefutable evidence
(p. 135). Later, in 1886, when his photographic interview with Eugne Chevreul
was published, Nadar described this novel medium in these terms: For the rst
time, the reader will effectively be the spectator, as though he witnessed the
event.
19
These discourses, therefore, came together to dene photography as a
more reliable witness than journalistic texts. However, the manner in which the
press used photographs revealed that the medium, on its own, was not deemed
sufcient in transmitting the news, and that it needed to become a part of an
elaborate graphic construction.
Hares photographs needed to be organized, arranged, and placed in a layout in
order to be understood. The articulation of meaning that painters and illustrators
took responsibility for, through the composition of their drawings, now required
the intervention of editors and artistic directors. Meaning was expressed through
the narrative layout of the photographs they presented to their readers. In
accordance with the dissemination of these photographs by Roger Fenton and
Jimmy Hare, it seems that the key change in the visual representation of war rested
on the ambiguity of the photographic medium. Photographys strength is also its
weakness: an instant record of war credited with an inherent authenticity, but
equally a mute visual detail with an obscure meaning that requires interpretation
by editors.
Acknowledgement
This essay was translated from French by Alison Skyrme. The author would like to thank
Vanessa Schwartz and Lynn Hunt for their advice in the writing of this article.
Notes
1. Hubertus von Amelunxen (1998) comments on a selection of images taken during
different international conicts, and builds his theory around the notion that the
understanding of the event was completely transformed by the presence of the
camera. Throughout Mary Warner Mariens (2002) book Photography: A Cultural
History, a recurring column entitled War and Photography explains the change in
the relationship between photography and war.
2. Some works oppose this view; see Barnhurst and Neron (2000) and Gervais (2003).
3. The Illustrated London News 764 (6 October 1855); The Illustrated London News
768 (3 November 1855); The Illustrated London News 769 (11 November 1855);
The Illustrated London News 777 (29 December 1855).
4. Regarding Roger Fenton, see Baldwin et al. (2004), Hannavy (1974), Gernsheim and
Gernsheim (1954), Keller (2001, 2007).
5. Ulrich Keller (2007: 40) notes that Thomas Agnew & Sons made a prot of 10,000.
6. Fenton and Agnew were both invited to present photographs to Napolon III, see
Robichon (2001: 847).
Gervais Witness to War 383
7. On the commerce of images, see Reni (2007).
8. The 13 February 1904 edition of LIllustration opens with an engraving of a
Cossack, titled for the rst time in the interior pages La guerre russo-japonaise,
LIllustration no. 3181 (13 February 1904): 1001; 1045.
9. La guerre russo-japonaise, LIllustration no. 3182 (20 February 1904): 114.
10. It is relevant to note that the massive dispatch of journalists by Colliers Weekly to
the front in the Far East followed the nomination of a new Editor in Chief, Norman
Hapgood, by Robert J. Collier, head of the paper.
11. Sur le thtre de la guerre, LIllustration no. 3192 (30 April 1904): 3023; Marche
de larme du general Kouroki, LIllustration no. 3195 (21 May 1904): 3402.
12. La photographie la guerre, LIllustration no. 3200 (25 June 1904): 4223.
13. For four citations, La photographie la guerre, LIllustration no. 3200 (25 June
1904): 4223.
14. Except in this issue: Concentration dune division japonaise dans la plaine de
Feng-Hoang-Tcheng, LIllustration no. 3208 (20 August 1904): 1201; about the
use of the double-page spread in 19th-century newspapers, see Gretton (2000).
15. Scnes de guerre, LIllustration no. 3209 (7 August 1904): 1367.
16. Une journe de combat entre Yen-Tai et le Cha-Ho photographie heure par heure,
LIllustration no. 3224 (10 December 1904): 41213.
17. LIllustration no. 2975 (3 March 1900): 1367.
18. Les soldats de linstantan, Je sais tout 23 (15 December 1906): 587.
19. Nadar, Bibliothque nationale de France, Mss, N.a.f, fol. 55.
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Thierry Gervais is a postdoctoral fellow at Ryerson University, Toronto, where
he teaches history of photography. He is the editor of tudes photographiques
and the author of numerous papers and book chapters including Les formes
de linformation [Forms of Information], in Lart de la photographie [The Art
of Photography], edited by A. Gunthert and M. Poivert (Citadelles & Mazenod,
2007) and On Either Side of the Gatekeeper: Technical Experimentation with
Photography at LIllustration (18801900), tudes photographiques 23 (May
2009). He is the co-author, with Galle Morel, of the book La photographie.
Histoire, techniques, presse, art [Photography. History, Technique, Press, Art]
(Larousse, 2008) and the co-author, with Dominique de Font-Raulx, of Lon
Gimpel (18731948). Les audaces dun photographe [The Innovations of a
Photographer] (Muse dOrsay/ditions des Cinq Continents, 2008). Thierry
Gervais has curated exhibitions in France, including Leon Gimpel. Les audaces
dun photographe (Muse dOrsay, 2008). He is continuing his research into the
use of photography in newspapers and the rst photojournalists.
Address: Ryerson University, 350 Victoria Street, Toronto, Ontario, CA M5B 2K3,
Canada. [email: gervais@ryerson.ca]