ABSTRACT
The deadlock of trench warfare continued until the spring of 1918 when the Germans, greatly strengthened by the transfer of divisions from the recently closed Russian front, launched an all-out assault which came agonizingly close to inflicting defeat. As the most important theatre of war the Western Front saw the strictest control of information both written and visual. It was the greatest number of official appointments of correspondents, photographers, cinematographers, and war artists was made and the ordinary press-man most rigorously excluded. 1916 saw the first establishment of British and Imperial official photographers on the Western Front. The photographers were fully aware of the status their work carried and that it was fundamental to official photographs that they should follow the policy of ‘the propaganda of the facts’ established by Charles Masterman and supported by Ivor Nicholson. The photographs taken during the battle of the Somme were a landmark in the visual reporting of the Western Front.
