Making of ‘Five Soldiers Silhouetted at the Battle of Broodseinde‘ (by Ernest Brooks, 1917), 2013

The story behind the photograph…

The most famous photograph by Ernest Brooks (1876–1957) shows five soldiers from the 8th East Yorkshire Regiment moving towards the frontline during the First World War. Complete with helmets, rifles and backpacks, they are seen silhouetted against a dramatic sky, with rays of sunlight emerging from lowering clouds. On 4 October 1917, the day the photograph was taken, the battle of Broodseinde was fought near Ypres in Flanders; it turned out to be the most successful Allied attack of the Passchendaele campaign. Brooks was the first official photographer to be appointed by the British military. At first he had no qualms about posing photographs or recreating scenes he had witnessed previously. However, after fellow journalists exposed him, he abandoned this practice. Two of his silhouette photographs were published in The Sphere newspaper on 20 October 1917 and proved very popular with the public, perhaps because of the anonymous ‘everyman’ nature of their subjects, or because they successfully captured small moments of humanity amid the conflict and carnage.