‘Public perception of the battle’

The Taking of Vimy Ridge: First World War Photographs of William Ivor Castle
by Carla-Jean Stokes

Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2025
$64.99  /  9781771126984

Reviewed by Theo Dombrowski

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The Vimy Ridge Monument is not the only Canadian First World War monument in Europe, but it is by far the largest and most famous.  Vernon historian Carla-Jean Stokes, in The Taking of Vimy Ridge, takes a penetrating look at the public perception of the battle—and, strikingly, makes the case that a single photographer played a crucial role in creating the “myth” of Vimy Ridge.

Subtitling her book “First World War Photographs of William Ivor Castle”, the historian of war photography assigns herself the daunting task of balancing clear-eyed analysis of William Castle’s manipulations of reality—even “fabricating” it—with respect for what he achieved. The very form and presentation of her copiously illustrated book, and the way she structures her information, combine to provide an evocative insight into a momentous point in history—and the role photography played in it.

From the start, Stokes engages her readers by presenting them with of a set of Castle’s photographs exhibited as wall-sized enlargements in London in 1917.  Upon seeing the massive images of “Canadians Taking Vimy Ridge” viewers were exposed to the drama of a line of advancing soldiers, framed by overhead explosions and, in the foreground, corpses. The power of the image, it seems, fed into the creation of the battle’s fame that found its apotheosis in a huge war monument.

Yet—and this was revealed only later—the explosions and corpses were not in the original photographs. They were added after the fact. The how and why of these additions thus become the impetus of the next part of the book, as Stokes moves away from the battle in time and place, returning to these images, and Vimy Ridge itself, only much later in her book.

All the tributaries leading into the “myth,” as Stokes summons them, were many and historically fascinating. The scholarship that she musters in the process only deepens the impact of her writing. Not only is her book sewn through with profuse footnotes, and appended with a full bibliography, but also it is written in level tones, never inflammatory or sensationalistic.  The uses of emotionally-charged words (like ‘faker’) are few and restrained.

Among these tributaries to this myth, the personal history of the central figure, William Ivor Castle, is the most basic. Without expanding his life into a full biography, Stokes selects details of English-born Castle’s experience most relevant to her interpretation of his later actions. Thus, for example, she emphasizes that, while he was not academically strong in school, he excelled in art. Why the emphasis? Stokes later builds some of her case by showing Castle’s photography was deeply affected by what she calls “aesthetic” principles. As she argues, Castle’s photographs were, for aesthetic reasons, shot mostly from the side and from a distance. More specifically, “Castle’s style favoured composition and aesthetics, sometimes over immediacy.” As she adds: “Nearly every photograph includes pieces of the wartime landscape—light rail tracks, trenches, or roads—to create leading lines and visual interest.” In other words, Castle made choices based on creating an impact.

In order to give an additional perspective on Castle’s role as photographer in the First World War, the author provides salient details of his role as a photographer in the earlier Balkans war. Here the whole culture of war photography, including camaraderie and competition amongst the journalists, she suggests were a seminal influence on Castle’s sense of his own role.

Separate but equally important background understanding lies, as Stokes shows, in the early years of the First World war and the photographs produced, both amateur and professional.  As she emphasizes, the story is complex. At the beginning of the war many soldiers had their own compact cameras, even selling their photos. However, the authorities, fearing that gruelling photos would negatively impact recruitment, censored all photographs. It will come as news to no one, however, that nations during this war, as always in history, wanted to bring the war home—but in the approved way. Hence the creation of the role of the officially appointed photographer of each country.  Enter William Castle? No—not quite. 

Facts serve splendidly to allow Stokes to throw Castle’s role into relief.  Contrasts are everywhere.  First is the contrast between Castle and the official Canadian photographer who preceded him, Harry Knobel. A comparatively straightforward photographer, Knobel left the position when he fell victim to immense psychological pressures. Second is the contrast between countries.  While it is true that The Canadian War Pictorial claimed that in their releases “no ‘faked’ pictures [will] be found,” Canada in general differed from Britain, which insisted on eschewing any tailoring in lieu of the “Propaganda of Facts.” Thus, as Stokes argues, quite apart from any manipulation, unlike its British equivalent, “it seems that the CWRO [Canadian War Records Office] learned how to spin the images after the fact.”

It seems, though, that the most powerful contributing influence on Castle’s approach to war photography was in the form of one man—newspaper tycoon, Max Aitken. Stokes puts considerable emphasis on the man who, in June 1917, became Lord Beaverbrook and “Canada’s official ‘Eyewitness to War.’” As she writes: “Analyzing Castle’s body of work produced at Vimy Ridge allows us to understand the unique nature of Lord Beaverbrook’s approach to visual propaganda as the head of the CWRO.” More specifically, and underlying his influence on Castle, were “Beaverbrook’s very goals of the official photography programs to astound audiences, to promote the righteousness of the Allied case, to make visitors believe that they were seeing what we really looked like, and to bring the war home.”

Even more striking is how, from Stokes’ perspective, Lord Beaverbrook used William Castle to carry out what was clearly driven by a strong sense of mission: “Uniquely, Beaverbrook—with Castle as his photographer—endeavoured to present an interpretation of the multifaceted nature of battle onto single photographic prints and succeed in convincing the public that Castle had waded into the thick of battle to produce authentic shots straight out of the camera.”

In a single stroke, then, the issue of deception (not Stokes’ word) rears its head in two forms. One is that Castle “waded into the thick of battle.”  The other is that what he “shot” was “authentic.”

The first of these Stokes considers several times in several ways. “Hailed as a hero” by others journalists and photographers, Castle, according to Stokes’ investigations, was fully capable of completely fabricating at least one story of his exposure to danger.  As she argues, for example, his tale of surviving a gas attack seems demonstrably false. Yet, as she writes: “Viewers were encouraged to think of Castle as a thrill-seeker, willing to risk life and limb for the perfect action photograph.” Still, she falls far short of condemning the intrepid photographer.  Rather, as she claims, “although Castle’s bravado was amplified by false claims, he did indeed put himself in deadly situations as official photographer.” Further, even in the Balkan War “he witnessed scenes of great human anguish.”

The second, and arguably, more significant issue raised by Beaverbrook, with his emphasis on “convincing the public,” is that Castle’s photographs were “authentic.”  Here Stokes’ approach is nuanced, even careful. In the first place, she underlines the importance of Castle’s “basic choices: perspective, proximity, and subjects.” To emphasize her point, she perceptively analyzes several of Castle’s photos. Interested readers may want to look at the online versions of such photographs where the computer lighting allows them to be seen more distinctly than they sometimes appear in the book.

Additionally, she shows how the mere act of selection furthered a lot of Beaverbrook’s—and Castle’s—objectives.  More specifically, and perhaps as we might expect of most war photographers: “This ratio of success to [human] loss was mirrored in Castle’s approach to photographing the battle—few photographs of wounded, far fewer of the dead, and far more of captured prisoners and weapons.”  In fact, many readers may most be struck by Stokes’ decision to include several pages of perhaps Castle’s most moving images. Photographing German prisoners of war in pairs, Castle manages, through these double portraits, to elicit from them an unforgettable sense of unguarded and authentic humanity.

The really thorny issue of technically manipulating war images Stokes treats in a more complex way.  First, and most problematic, are what she shows about such photographs as those where Castle purports to portray Canadians “going over the top” and “charging on the Somme.” Thus, she reveals that one captioned “[f]ixing bayonets previous to a charge…on the Somme” was actually “taken during training.” More to the point: “With a few darkroom tricks, the breech-covers of the soldiers’ training rifles were removed, hands were carefully re-drawn to accommodate new rifle breeches, and shell bursts were added in.”

Further problematic is the fact that, though his techniques “were encouraged by his superiors,” he seems to have been unpopular with Canadian soldiers because of his misleading photographs. However, though “Castle’s portrayal of the Canadian Corps was unique in its level of manipulation,” Stokes cautions, “Castle should not be dismissed simply as a ‘faker’.” In fact, at one of the few points when she rises to speculation, she goes so far as to ascribe to Castle not just the desire to help the war effort through his photographs, but to achieve something much more profound and enduring; the “desire to immortalize history through the photographic medium may have been what inspired Castle in creating photographic composites like ‘The Taking of Vimy Ridge.’”

And, with this statement, Stokes, in effect, circles back to the opening of the book—what, at one point, she calls “the myth of Vimy Ridge.” While not discounting the huge significance of the battle and its real achievement, Stokes is clearly determined to bring clarity to and perspective on the battle.

This she does from several different angles. First, she points out that, far from being a single charge, it took “months” of “meticulous preparations”—aided, interestingly, by aerial photographs. Additionally, she points out that, because the British and French had failed to take the ridge, many Canadians were driven by something other than just the heroic desire to push back the enemy: “The chance to capture what the British and French had been unable to held some allure to the Canadian Corps.” Finally—or almost finally—“[t]housands of British soldiers and gunners joined the Canadians assault on Vimy Ridge, meaning the victory was not solely a Canadian achievement.” It was in 2017, the centenary of the battle, she writes, when historians began to challenge some of the assumptions, amongst other things arguing that there were other battles where Canadians were at least as distinguished, though with none of the fame.

Still—and this is the argument with which she leaves her readers—“[t]he cohesion and success of the attack laid the seeds for what would become a persistent postwar myth of Vimy as a nation-building moment….”  Seeds, perhaps, yes, but let’s not forget the giant enlargements of photographs—manipulated photographs, photographs that underlie the most basic point of the book: “Castle had an active role in the making of Vimy Ridge.” And, extending beyond Vimy Ridge, as Stokes amply shows, was the whole world of war, of photographs, and as she puts it, “a larger truth about what photographs are capable of.” Her words resonate as a reminder that we always need to be alert to the power of photography, now perhaps more than ever in history.

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Theo Dombrowski grew up in Port Alberni and studied at UVic and later in Nova Scotia and London, England. With a doctorate in English literature, he returned to teach at Royal Roads, UVic, and finally Lester Pearson College in Metchosin. He also studied painting and drawing at Banff School of Fine Arts and UVic. He lives at Nanoose Bay. You can visit his website here. [Editor’s note: Theo Dombrowski has reviewed books by Gail Sidone Šobat, Alan Twigg, Ian Williams, Jason A.N. Taylor, Tim Bowling, and Stephen L. Howard for The British Columbia Review.]

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