Battle of Zonnebeke …, 1918

Frank Hurley battle composite

Photographs Never Lie?

All is not as it seems. The reality is this is not a single photograph of a single event. Hurley printed a dozen negatives together to create a grand panorama of battle. He frequently used composite photography in his quest for the picturesque and saw no difficulty in creating photographs from several negatives. Hurley stated that his heroic images of Australian soldiers in World War I were accurate, despite their contrived production.

A showman at heart, Captain Hurley’s creativity could override his objectivity. His superior, war historian Charles Bean, vehemently disagreed with Hurley’s idea of authenticity and described his photographs as pure distortion.

The immediate post-War populace could neither deal with truth nor confront the utter futility of the conflict, seeking solace instead in Hurley’s heroic composite images of the carnage, seemingly ennobled with shafts of light coming from dramatic clouds—even though the clouds were photographed on another day, somewhere else!
Display item Battle of Zonnebeke …, 1918

 

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