07/09/2026
We’ve spent the past 10 days travelling through France and Belgium, with much of our journey focused on the story of the First World War.
Of course, being photographers, we couldn’t help but take rather a lot of photographs along the way. The enormous landscapes of the Western Front may look peaceful today, but they are still marked by the events of those four devastating years of trench warfare.
What we hadn’t really considered before this trip, though, was the story of photography itself and the important role it played during the Great War.
Photography was still very much in its infancy. Cameras were cumbersome, exposures required patience and getting a usable image demanded a fair degree of technical skill. Yet photography was already being used in an extraordinary number of ways.
Aerial photography, in particular, became increasingly important. Images taken from above helped shape military strategy, map enemy positions and relay vital information. This was especially fascinating for Esther, whose dad served in the RAF as an aerial photographer in the 1960s.
And then there were the photographs taken on the ground.
Behind respectful glass and museum displays, we saw glimpses of the reality of the war for millions of men – young and old, from so many different nationalities. Some images were censored; German soldiers, for example, were permitted to take photographs but were prohibited from photographing military action. Others were deliberately used as propaganda by both sides.
Standing on the battlefields of Verdun and across the Western Front, it was impossible not to think about those early photographers working in very different conditions, carefully capturing moments that would ultimately become part of the historical record.
Those images have survived for more than a century.
And somehow, that gave us a newfound respect for the people behind the cameras – the skill involved, the limitations they worked with, and the importance of what they were recording.
So perhaps this trip wasn’t quite a break from photography after all.
It just gave us a very different perspective on it. 📷🇫🇷🇧🇪
