Reporting on War

Reporting on War

Introduction

Photography's first records of war are often associated, in these studies, with the beginnings of news reporting as it was practiced in the second half of the 19th century. Photographic documents were seen as more faithful and authentic representations than drawings and were therefore more suited to an illustrated press that strove towards impartial reporting. Yet, however logical such narratives might appear, an analysis of war images in the 19th-century press actually reveals a certain resistance to the new medium of photography. First, printing techniques did not allow for the direct use of the photograph itself in newspaper layouts: as the photographs were reproduced through the work of an engraver, what was there to distinguish them from traditional representations? Second, at the turn of the century, the halftone process replaced engraving and allowed for the printing of images that were more faithful in tonal subtleties to the original photographs. When special correspondents began supplying war photographs, how did illustrated newspapers organize the dissemination of this new kind of image? A consideration of the use of war photographs in the illustrated press informs us of the choices made regarding the documentation of the war and the nature of the images that circulated in the public sphere, shaping the visual culture of the era (Hersey, 2001).

From the analysis of two particular conflicts, the Crimean War (1854-6) and the Russo-Japanese War (1904-5), we will review the modalities of war imagery in illustrated newspapers and, in particular, the role played by photography. This analysis will demonstrate that, despite the alleged authenticity of photographs, drawings appeared as more effective in bearing witness to the first conflict, and that, by 1900, photographs of the second conflict were intimately tied to precise newspaper layout in order to reveal meaning.

Crimean War

At the end of 1855, The Illustrated London News (ILN), a weekly publication, printed several illustrations that were directly inspired by the work of the English photographer Roger Fenton. The publication of these engravings 'from photographs' accompanied articles dedicated to a conflict between the Russian and the Ottoman Empire that had begun in 1853 (Man et al, 1988).

Tsar Nicolas I sought to expand his empire westward and, more importantly, create access to the Mediterranean, through which Western fleets crossed to the Orient. In fear of geopolitical movements that would restrain their commercial enterprises, England, and then France allied themselves with the Ottoman Empire and, in the spring of 1854, engaged in this conflict. From the time that Fenton's images appeared in the ILN, the allied forces had suffered a series of brutal and poorly prepared, though important, battles - Alma, Sebastopol, Balaklava and Inkermann - giving them an advantage over Russia, which retreated from annexed territories. Several months later, the two sides began negotiations and, in March 1856 at the Congress of Paris, reached an agreement that put an end to the Crimean War (Sachsman et al, 2008). War photographs before this period existed only in the form of several dozen daguerreotypes related ...