The Mad Photographer

I was intrigued to read about James Hurley. In 1917 James Francis Hurley (1885-1962) became the first offical photographer to the Australian Imperial Forces. When he arrived at the Western Front his rank was honorary captain but when the troops saw the risks he took to get his photographs, they dubbed him “the mad photographer”.

"To get war pictures of striking interest and sensation is like attempting the impossible," Hurley wrote in September 1917. The battlefront was too large, the cameras were too big and the shells did not land where and when Hurley needed them. He and Hubert Wilkins, the second Australian official photographer, tried to capture the reality of battle close-up however they needed light to make pictures and anyone standing on the parapet of a frontline trench in daylight was likely to be shot by a sniper within seconds.

Hurley was a strong defender of pictorialism – the idea that photographs should express ideas, tell stories and excite emotions in much the same way as paintings – and finally he began to manipulate war pictures. Some of his most famous battle scenes are in fact composites of several negatives, although not many people realise this. Some critics say that Hurley was more an artist than a reporter.