The Taking of Vimy Ridge
First World War Photographs of William Ivor Castle
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The Taking of Vimy Ridge explores the life and works of William Ivor Castle, a Canadian official First World War photographer known for staging and manipulating his photographs.
Castle shot more than 1000 photographs during his time as official photographer attached to the Canadian Corps, and his iconic (though sometimes manipulated) scenes of war created a sensation at London's Grafton Galleries during the war. But the remainder of his wartime oeuvre, and Castle himself, are less well-remembered today.
The Taking of Vimy Ridge analyzes the unique relationship between Castle and the Canadian War Records Office and distinguishes several of Castle's never-before-identified manipulated works as he attempted to illustrate the Battle of Vimy Ridge--one of Canada's most mythologized First World War battles--to audiences around the world.
Drawing from Canadian and British archival records, as well as Castle's complete body of work from the Battle of Vimy Ridge, this richly illustrated book offers a much more expansive understanding of Castle's contribution to both war photography and our understanding of portrayals of the First World War, including a close interpretation of the technical choices he made in framing his images, and the context in which this oeuvre developed.
About this Author
Carla-Jean Stokes is an historian of war photography, specializing in the history of Canadian and British official war photographs, as well as the preservation of photographic objects in private and public collections. She works as a curator in the heritage sector, and lives in Vernon, British Columbia, Canada.
Reviews
Carla-Jean Stokes crafts a narrative that is both familiar and ground-breaking. Many of William Ivor Castle's famous photos of Vimy Ridge in this book will be familiar to the reader, but Stokes masterfully explains the story-behind-the-story of the images. Generations before software made it easy to edit photographs, Castle was changing and manipulating his First World War photographs to tell a dramatic story that often differed from the "truth" of the original images. Stokes' work sheds new light on our understanding of Vimy and wartime photography while rightfully bringing the photographer into the spotlight.
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