Hell on Earth: World War I Gasmask World
Posted by John Brownlee
They are the most remarkable pictures of one of the most hellish places on earth.
Never seen before, these astonishing photographs, lovingly hand-touched in colour to bring to life the nightmare of Passchendaele, were released this week to commemorate the 90th anniversary of the battle that, between July and November 1917, claimed a staggering 2,121 lives a day and in total some quarter of a million Allied soldiers.
Hell on Earth: The never before seen colour photographs of the bloody battle of Passchendaele [Daily Mail] : Cynical-C
Categories: Gasmask World, Germany, Photography
Posted at 10:52 am on July 18, 2007
5 Comments -
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Pingback by frankie23.com | viva la rudo » Blog Archive » Hell on Earth: Colour Photos of World War I — July 18, 2007 @ 9:53 pm
No disrespect intended for the soldiers, but this picture looks faked to me. The water isn’t agitated. Perspective odd. No reflections below the soldiers either. Photo-faking was a common practice by newspapers of the day. If you could go back with a modern digital camera, and survive for more than a few minutes, you could capture the hell of ‘the Pash,’ as they called it… it was real enough. God weeps at the folly of mankind.
Comment by Mogo the Mugger — July 21, 2007 @ 5:24 pm
they might have been overexposed when originally shot, hence no reflections. Perhaps the exposures were rather long hence still waters?
Maybe they were just posed.
Comment by phrawgg2 — July 23, 2007 @ 5:31 am
I’m sorry, but the photos are fakes, nothing to do with exposure. They’re cut/past and hand-tinted. Real colour photos, using a process called Autochrome, were takien during the Great War, by the French in France and by Australians in the Middle East, but these are phoney.
Comment by James H. Reeve — July 29, 2007 @ 9:52 pm
Also 1. Note the fake explosion in the background. 2. You have to ask yourself, was the photographer crouching out in the open, in front of this front-line position? 3. The small portable cameras of the day (e.g. Kodak) could not take a high-quality image like this. How did the photographer drag a heavy camera and plates through miles of mud and slippery duckboards? Let us salute Harry Patch, the 100+ year-old last surviving infantryman from WWI. God bless him, and God damn the men like the Kaiser, Kitchner and others who did this to Harry and his comrades.
Comment by Mogo the Mugger — July 30, 2007 @ 1:48 am