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The WPH Photograph Office

In the second half of the war, the focus of war reporting shifted to the medium of photography. The aim behind the WPH's deployment of official war photographers was to direct the public's visual perception of the war.

At the start of the war, the War Press Headquarters (WPH) concentrated the official representation of the war on written reports and classical military and battle painting. It was only when Colonel Wilhelm Eisner-Bubnas was appointed director in spring 1917 that an awareness developed for the manipulative power of photography. The WPH gradually shifted to creating structures for the government control of photographs and to placing pictorial propaganda at the centre of opinion-forming activities. The Photograph Office became the central department for pictorial propaganda, commissioning, censoring and processing the official pictorial reporting.

The War Press Headquarters' strategy was to extend its monopoly position to the pictorial representation of the war. The production of images was to be encouraged, but at the same time strictly monitored and regulated so that private agencies practically ceased to be source of supply for the illustrated press. This media concentration under government pressure ensured that the pictures published during the years of the war largely corresponded with the demands of government propaganda.

Experienced press photographers from established newspapers and professional photographers were recruited and sent to the front as officially accredited war photographers. For them, membership of the War Press Headquarters was not only a step up in their careers but also protection against having to serve at the front. In part they could continue to work for the newspapers and photo agencies, but they were primarily subject to the command hierarchy of the WPH.

In the war zones, press photographers were co-ordinated in what were known as Photo Offices and entrusted with the task of making photos both for military purposes and for the press and propaganda. The war was to be presented from its heroic side: successful raids, defeated opponents and the challenges of everyday soldier life were skilfully staged. Depending on where they were deployed, the war photographers were expected to supply between five and sixty photos a month, but some also delivered hundreds of photographs from the battles zones. However, only very few succeeded in publishing their photos under their own names, and most photographers remained anonymous.

The War Press Headquarters' Photograph Office systematically collected the photographs, censored pictures unsuitable for propaganda purposes and supplied the domestic and foreign press with pictorial material. In addition, the photos were shown in exhibitions, used as advertising material and passed on to schools and publishers.

Translation: David Wright

Bibliografie 

Holzer, Anton: Die andere Front. Fotografie und Propaganda im Ersten Weltkrieg, Darmstadt 2007

Paul, Gerhard: Bilder des Krieges – Krieg der Bilder. Die Visualisierung des modernen Krieges, München 2004

Contents related to this chapter

Aspects

  • Aspect

    Guiding the masses

    Guiding the mood of the masses was an important aspect of warfare during the First World War. Considerable information and communication work was carried out to persuade the population of the “true facts”. All areas of life were influenced by propaganda in a way that had not been seen hitherto: reports in the newspapers, posters on the walls, even teaching material in schools now communicated controlled information. What methods and media were used? How did the various warring nations attempt to influence public opinion? What was communicated and how effective was the propaganda?

Persons, Objects & Events

  • Object

    The role of the intellectual in the war

    The year 1914 brought about an incisive change in their private and professional lives of many intellectuals. Formerly international intellectual and artist circles collapsed, many intellectuals entered the war, voluntarily or not, and many of them failed to return.

  • Object

    Media

    All Quiet on the Western Front was released in 1930. It was the film of Erich Maria Remarque’s novel of the same name about the experiences of a soldier during the First World War. Remarque’s book and the film adaptation are classic anti-war statements. Alongside the patriotic, glorified heroic epics and “authentic” documentation of service for the fatherland, this was just one way in which the First World War was portrayed in literature and films – a medium that had come into being only twenty years before the outbreak of war.

  • Object

    Monitoring & control

    Everyday life in the Habsburg Monarchy was characterised by propaganda, monitoring and control, as can be seen by the many blank spaces in the daily newspapers and deletions in private correspondence and telegrams. At the same time an attempt was made in texts and audio-visual media to whip up general enthusiasm for the war. Not even the youngest inhabitants of the empire remained untouched, and the influence of the state was also felt in the schools of the Monarchy.

  • Object

    Depicting the war

    The photo by Alexander Exax shows a scene in the trenches in Galicia in 1915. The title “im Feuer” [“under fire”] gives the impression that the picture has been taken in the middle of the action. Dynamic photos like this were typical of the pictorial iconography of the First World War. The illustrated weeklies were among the most important distribution media, but there were others: exhibitions and posters, picture postcards and cinemas collaborated with private picture agencies and the official propaganda to provide a visual depiction of the war.

Memories