The work of photographer Lt. John Warwick Brooke

[RichardBaker]

While I've been digging around looking into my great uncle's action with the London Regiment (Royal Fusiliers 3rd Bn. attd. 2nd/2nd Bn.), the same name kept surfacing: that of the army photographer John Warwick Brooke.

Brooke seemed to have been present at many of the major battles - or there to document the aftermath. In his wiki entry it tells us that Brooke was one of only 4 accredited photographers during the whole of the war and that he took 10% of images (4,100) from that period. After the war, he returned to press work and as a photographer myself, this is extraordinary in that he witnessed the war's horrors then went back to domestic news.

His work was obviously censored and used for propaganda but what strikes me about Brooke's work was that he didn't pose the pictures - or as much as his contemporaries did. We see the sort of photography that brings the war to life in a way I haven't seen before, in a purely documentary style.

We see: captured artillery; trench life; landscapes (some quite beautiful); portraits; the role of women; refugees; set-piece VIP/royalty visits; Indian regiments; tanks and gruesome details of the dead (interestingly, from both sides) and many of the same scene from different angles.

But the most famous picture I noticed was this:

Brooke was in the area the day after my great uncle was killed near Chipilly (8/8/18) and one sees in the pictures captured guns and mortars that may have contributed to my relative's death. They bring the topography to life in a way I couldn't imagine from maps so I urge you to sift through his (and of course by others) and see if he was there when your own ancestors were there.

[Terry_Reeves]

Richard

This might be of interest.

http://www.cairogang.com/other-people/castle-propaganda/military/brooke/brooke.html

TR

[RichardBaker]

Thanks for that Terry.

Yes, it occurred to me that he may have gone to Ireland as well as the national news and crime beat. Press agencies of the day didn't credit individual staffers so it's unlikely you'd find any pictures attributed to him.

I wonder if the Brooke/Brooks who went awol is really him? If so, he certainly redeemed himself later on. And I haven't found anything on his later life and death date - but knowing a few press photographers today, I'll bet he loved sharing his war stories, rather than those who really suffered and rarely spoke of their time in the trenches.

Richard.

[corisande]

Cairo Gang is my site. In fact since writing that, I have more on his time in Ireland, but have not put it online yet

My personal feeling is that he took the staged photos in Ireland, on the basis that he was there and worked for that agency.

That in turn prompts me to question how many of his Ww1 photos were posed

[RichardBaker]

It's probably true to say that press photographers staged many of their pictures (which was cultural of the day) so yes, if he was habitually doing so in Ireland, there's not much to say he wasn't doing so on the western front. Maybe I should look again at what he did there and re-assess but from a first look, I couldn't see that in what the IWM show.