Photographers
Tom Aitken
IIIF Manifest
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| First World War 'Official Photographs' > Photographers > Tom Aitken > (53) N.471 - Although the Germans shell this area every day it does not dissuade this French peasant from attending to his crops |
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| Permanent URL | https://digital.nls.uk/74549086 |
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| Description | French farmer ploughing, Western Front, Spring 1918. This photograph is an evocative symbol of hope. Framed in the doorway of a ruined building, a British soldier is watching a French farmer as he breaks up a patch of ground with a horse-drawn harrow. As Aitken only came to the Front in the winter of 1917, this has to have been taken in the spring of 1918. The huge numbers of horses killed during the war and the shortage of manpower meant that in many areas of Britain the horse was replaced by tractors soon after the end of the war. [Original reads: 'OFFICIAL PHOTOGRAPH TAKEN ON THE BRITISH WESTERN FRONT IN FRANCE. Although the Germans shell this area every day it does not dissuade this French peasant from attending to his crops. A British Tommy is watching him.'] |
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| Description | Tom Aitken was a newspaper photographer from Glasgow who was assigned in December 1917 as a war photographer along with David McLellan and Armando Consolé. McLellan's work also features in the National Library of Scotland’s Haig Papers. War photographers held a hybrid position during World War I, being part of yet not ultimately responsible to the military. |
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| Description | Photographs by named photographers. |
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| Description | Black-and-white photographs mainly of the Western Front during the First World War. Official British war photographers took many of them for propaganda purposes. Unless otherwise stated, titles are the photographs' original captions. From the papers of Field Marshal (Earl) Haig (1861-1928). The Haig Papers also contain Douglas Haig’s diaries. |
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| Shelfmark | Acc.3155 |
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