In the late 1990’s I was undertaking City & Guilds photography at night school and in the opening module we had to write I think it was 2000 words on a photographer. This terrified me as I wasn’t at all “arty”. At a lot of my classmates, I guess predictably choose the seminal Ansel Adams, which wasn’t the cop-out you would think because we were working in black and white a lot and learning wet darkroom techniques.
However, while trawling Leeds City Library for inspiration – yes a real library this was before the days the internet. I found a book called Cecil Beaton War Photographer. Now I knew of Beaton but because of his Oscar for“My Fair Lady,” I wasn’t even fully aware of his celebrity photography. So as you can image I was amazed to find Britain’s most prolific (over 7000 images) and unlikely photographer of the 2nd World War.
Beaton’s photography wasn’t like the images produced in Vietnam by Don McCullin; Beaton was photographing for the Ministry of Information. He wasn’t allowed on the front lines; his role was to create shots that could be used for propaganda. Showing, I guess, the Hollywood side of war and the also that life did go on something which is amazingly illustrated in the image: A man and his daughter pass posters in Cairo, Egypt, 1942.
In this picture, I see many things the tie back to Hollywood with the film posters, the sense of place, a sense of peace when around you know the world was in chaos this is felt in almost all his posed pictures. Together with strength and companionship.
There are images of bombed out building in the Blitz, but I don’t want to dwell on them in this post but mainly the humanity that comes across in the candid and posed people shots from Victims to rank and file soldiers and Officers alike. Yes, they do probably in some cases glorify what was happening or gloss over the horror but that what they were they for. Beaton traveled the world to show the World the allies were winning.
Follow this link to the Guardian to see more of these images and makeup you own mind. I have a great admiration for these shots as Beaton took his skills from Hollywood and celebrity photography to the most un-glamorous of things – War and produced world-changing images.
Bibliography
Cecil Beaton (2015) in Wikipedia. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cecil_Beaton (Accessed: 15 December 2015).
Ronk, L. (2014) Cecil Beaton’s war child: Portrait of a young victim of the blitz. Available at: http://time.com/3878665/cecil-beaton-portrait-of-eileen-dunne-1940-london-blitz/ (Accessed: 15 December 2015).
The Guardian (2015) Cecil Beaton’s rare war photography – in pictures. Available at: http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2012/aug/31/cecil-beaton-war-photography-pictures (Accessed: 15 December 2015).