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The camera and the Red Cross: “Lamentable pictures” and conflict photography bring into focus an international movement, 1855–1865

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 March 2021

Sonya de Laat
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Abstract

Henry Dunant's appeal for a neutral and impartial organization to provide care to wounded combatants aligned with growing criticism of mid-nineteenth-century European and North American conflicts. This article discusses the important convergence of Dunant's “lamentable pictures”, laid out in his Memory of Solferino, with spectators’ passionate responses to them and to battlefield photographs that circulated between 1855 and 1865. Through these images and reactions, there emerged a shared, expanded vision of humanity worth caring for, which brought into focus an international humanitarian movement.

Keywords

Red Cross historycombat photographyhumanitarian visual cultureHenry DunantSolferino
Type
Selected articles
Information
International Review of the Red Cross , Volume 102 , Issue 913: Digital technologies and war , April 2020 , pp. 417 - 443
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the ICRC.

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Footnotes

*

The author would like to thank her doctoral thesis committee: Sharon Sliwinski (Western University), Amanda Grzyb (Western University) and Lisa Schwartz (McMaster University). She would also like to thank Valérie Gorin (CERAH), Dominique Marshall (Carleton University) and members of the Canadian Network on Humanitarian History for comments on early drafts of this paper. Her participation in the Global Humanitarian Research Academy, along with her SSHRC and OGS doctoral awards, were invaluable in supporting research for this paper.

References

1 Richard Rorty, “Human Rights, Rationality and Sentimentality”, in Truth and Progress: Philosophical Papers, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1998, p. 121.

2 The Duke of Wellington made the following statement on 2 July 1813: “It is quite impossible for me or any other man to command a British Army under the existing system. We have in the service the scum of the earth as common soldiers.” This reflected a common sentiment, particularly among the gentry. See Jonathan Marwil, “Photography at War”, History Today, Vol. 50, No. 6, 2000, p. 35.

3 Following Darnton, I support close readings of the past to gain insights into the present. See Robert Darnton, George Washington's False Teeth: An Unconventional Guide to the Eighteenth Century, Norton, New York, 2003.

4 Henry Dunant, A Memory of Solferino, International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), Geneva, 1862.

5 Dunant would create three editions of his book within the first year: one for close acquaintances, followed by one for heads of State and political officials, and a third popular edition. Martin Grumpert, Dunant: The Story of the Red Cross, Oxford University Press, New York, 1938, p. 84.

6 Dunant was exposed to photography through Jean-Gabriel Eynard (1775–1863), a family friend, wealthy banker and early photography enthusiast. While photography was growing in popular use, reproduction technology at the time meant that photographs had to be translated into (woodblock) prints or hand-printed for each volume, which was prohibitively expensive. Dunant primarily considered himself a man of letters, making it natural that he would have gravitated to the written word to express himself. He did recognize the rhetorical force of visual pictures, using woodblock prints in his first pamphlets promoting his ideas for an aid organization. He would later coordinate the composite group portrait of the participants of the First Geneva Convention. See Roger Durand, Henry Dunant, 1828–1910, Slatkine, Geneva, 2011, p. 42; Roger Durand, personal communication, July 2015; Natalie Klein-Kelly, “Dot to Dot: Exploring Humanitarian Activities in the Early Nineteenth Century”, Human Rights and Humanitarianism Blog, 13 October 2017, available at: https://hhr.hypotheses.org/1766#more-1766 (all internet references were accessed in January 2021).

7 Karen Halttunen, “Humanitarianism and the Pornography of Pain in Anglo-American Culture”, American Historical Review, Vol.100, No. 2, 1995, p. 307.

8 See R. Durand, Henry Dunant, above note 6, p. 67. Dufour was in many ways Dunant's mentor: he would later help arrange the battlefield meeting between Dunant and Napoleon that would lead Dunant to stumble across – quite by accident – the Battle of Solferino, and he eventually became one of the five founding members of the Red Cross.

9 M. Grumpert, above note 5, p. 15. Grumpert continues: “During their lifetime, they were honoured and admired, and even now are accorded full rites by the motion picture industry. It was felt that even the shadow of pain and suffering was a last damnable blot on modern civilization.”

10 Thomas W. Laqueur, “Bodies, Details, and the Humanitarian Narrative”, in Lynn A. Hunt (ed.), The New Cultural History, MPublishing, University of Michigan Library, 1989, p. 200.

11 Ibid., p. 184.

12 Ibid., pp. 176, 191.

13 R. Rorty, above note 1, pp. 129, 122–123.

14 Heide Fehrenbach and Davide Rodogno (eds), Humanitarian Photography: A History, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2015.

15 Subsequent literary critics have differentially interpreted and debated Stowe's use of violence in her novel. For example, in her analysis “The Ecstasies of Sentimental Wounding in Uncle Tom's Cabin”, Marianne Noble puts her ideas into dialogue with those of Laqueur and Halttunen, who each find different motivations and impacts of Stowe's mobilization of violence in the book. Noble reveals the ways in which the humanitarian narrative is a “double edged sword”, precariously balancing liberation and repression, awareness-raising and objectifying. What this criticism points to is a long-standing, perpetual paradox of potentially doing harm while trying to do good by objectifying victims and their pain. See Marianne Noble, “The Ecstasies of Sentimental Wounding in Uncle Tom's Cabin”, Yale Journal of Criticism, Vol. 10, No. 2, 1997.

16 Abraham Lincoln is said to have believed that Stowe's book played a part in bringing about the American Civil War, a conflict that was still nearly a decade away when she and Dunant met. M. Grumpert, above note 5, p. 15. According to Hamand, “Abraham Lincoln is alleged to have said upon meeting Harriet Beecher Stowe, ‘so this is the little lady who made this big war’.” Wendy F. Hamand, “‘No Voice from England’: Mrs. Stowe, Mr. Lincoln, and the British in the Civil War”, New England Quarterly, Vol. 61, No. 1, 1988, p. 3.

17 H. Dunant, above note 4, p. 62.

18 Ibid., p. 67.

19 Ibid., p. 16.

20 Ibid., pp. 22, 65.

21 Joseph Slaughter, Human Rights Inc., Fordham University Press, Brooklyn, NY, 2007.

22 Kevin Rozario, “‘Delicious Horrors’: Mass Culture, the Red Cross, and the Appeal of Modem American Humanitarianism”, American Quarterly, Vol. 55, No. 3, 2003, available at: https://muse.jhu.edu/article/46647.

23 Lynn Festa, Sentimental Figures of Empire in Eighteenth-Century Britain and France, Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, MD, 2006, p. 103; see also Jane Lydon, Photography, Humanitarianism, Empire, Bloomsbury, London, 2016.

24 K. Halttunen, above note 7, p. 307.

25 H. Dunant, above note 4, p. 73.

26 Florence Nightingale famously stated following her experience at Crimea: “Suffering lifts its victim above normal values. While suffering endures there is neither good nor bad, valuable nor invaluable, enemy nor friend. The victim has passed to a region beyond human classification or moral judgments and his suffering is a sufficient claim.” See British Red Cross, “Florence Nightingale and the Red Cross”, 20 August 2017, available at: www.redcross.org.uk/stories/health-and-social-care/health/how-florence-nightingale-influenced-the-red-cross##. Ironically, Nightingale was against Dunant's plan, arguing that it would lead to governments relaxing their responsibilities towards their fighting forces. Nightingale's caution has since been termed the “Nightingale risk” in conflict studies circles. See Katherine Davies, Continuity, Change and Contest: Meanings of “Humanitarian” from the “Religion of Humanity” to the Kosovo War, Humanitarian Policy Group Working Paper, Overseas Development Institute, 2012, p. 5; R. Durand, Henry Dunant, above note 6; Eleanor O'Gorman, Conflict and Development, Zed Books, New York and London, 2011.

27 H. Dunant, above note 4, p. 72.

28 Ibid., p. 115.

29 David P. Forsythe, The Humanitarians: The International Committee of the Red Cross, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2005, p. 17.

30 R. Rorty, above note 1, pp. 128, 130. See also D. P. Forsythe, above note 29, p. 17: those who had “the money and leisure time to make that spirit count for something, proved receptive to Dunant's ideas. Dunant would ultimately draw upon what might be termed Genevan exceptionalism: the collective self-image, no doubt partially the product of Calvinism, that the citizens of Geneva constituted a special people with a positive role to play.”

31 D. P. Forsythe, above note 29. See also N. Klein-Kelly, above note 6.

32 While at Brescia, where Dunant spent most of his time providing what care he could to wounded combatants from the Battle of Solferino, Dunant made appeals to philanthropists in Geneva to donate funds and supplies. Dunant's contacts also included the Dutch Royal Family, establishing a line of royal patronage with the Red Cross that continues to this day. R. Durand, Henry Dunant, above note 6; Caroline Moorehead, Dunant's Dream: War, Switzerland, and the History of the Red Cross, HarperCollins, London, 1998.

33 R. Durand, Henry Dunant, above note 6. Dunant developed his networking proficiency while internationalizing the Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA) in the decade before the battle of Solferino. He was employed by the YMCA while the First War of Italian Independence (1848–49) and the Russo-Turkish War (1853–56) raged. The Crimean War was a campaign in the Russo-Turkish War; the Battle of Solferino would be fought during the Second War of Italian Independence in 1859.

34 Cited in M. Grumpert, above note 5, p. 84.

35 Cited in ibid., p. 85.

36 Ibid., pp. 84–85. Dickens’ title is a reference to the moniker given to Dunant by the soldiers he tended to; he had arrived at the aftermath of the battle in the tropical colonial suit he wore for his meeting with Napoleon II.

37 H. Dunant, above note 4, p. 35.

38 This credit comes not only from the ICRC, but also from critical humanitarian scholars such as David Rieff. See J. Slaughter, above note 21, p. 327.

39 In this regard, Goya is believed to have been influenced by Jacques Callot's Les Grands Misères de la Guerre, 1633.

40 It is speculated that the prints were too critical of the French, then the European powerhouse. See Jonathan Jones, “Look What We Did”, The Guardian, 20 June 2002, available at: www.theguardian.com/culture/2003/mar/31/artsfeatures.turnerprize2003.

41 Originally published under the title Fatal Consequences of Spain's Bloody War with Bonaparte, and Other Emphatic Caprices, Goya's prints contain many images of violence toward civilians, mainly women. It would be almost a century from the time he made his pictures before humanitarian laws to protect women, children and other non-combatants would come into effect.

42 Sharon Sliwinski, Human Rights in Camera, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL, 2011; Susan Sontag, Regarding the Pain of Others, Picador, New York, 2004.

43 Paul Bouvier, “In Folio: ‘Yo Lo Vi’. Goya Witnessing the Disasters of War: An Appeal to the Sentiment of Humanity”, International Review of the Red Cross, Vol. 93, No. 884, 2011.

44 For instance, David Hume, Francis Hutcheson, and Adam Smith: see K. Halttunen, above note 7, p. 307. See also K. Rozario, above note 22.

45 S. Sliwinski, above note 42, pp. 5, 23.

46 M. Grumpert, above note 5, p. 39.

47 Simon J. Potter, “Webs, Networks, and Systems: Globalization and the Mass Media in the Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century British Empire”, Journal of British Studies, Vol. 46, No. 3, 2007, available at: www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/515446?seq=1. See also Jeremy Stein, “Reflections on Time, Time-Space Compression and Technology in the Nineteenth Century”, in Jon May and Nigel Thrift (eds), Timespace: Geographies of Temporality, Routledge, London, 2001.

48 A dry collodion process was also possible, but most photographers of the time used the wet process because, as one photographer noted, the dry process was “too slow to be employed where the exposure must only occupy a short time”. See J. L., “Photography at the Seat of War”, Photographic News, Vol. 2 No. 42, 24 June 1859, p. 183.

49 Jason E. Hill and Vanessa Schwartz (eds), Getting the Picture: The Visual Culture of the News, Bloomsbury Academic, London and New York, 2015. Also, J. L. wrote this account of his endeavour to take photographs of the hostilities mounting in Italy: “When I left England my intention was to make a tour with the camera in Switzerland, but the exciting prospect of being able to get plates of battle-fields, sieges, and other incidental scenes, induced me to change my course, and, instead of remaining among the glaciers and ice-peaks, to make a journey to the sunny plains of Italy.” J. L., above note 48, p. 183.

50 With crimes, disasters and calamities as its regular fare, Herbert Ingram's Illustrated London News focused on more serious issues than another British magazine, Punch, that launched around the same time. Concerned about readership, sales, social conventions and Victorian sensibilities, the Illustrated London News carefully meted out its news with a strong dose of excitement and entertainment. See Paul Hockings, “Disasters Drawn: The Illustrated London News in the Mid-19th Century”, Visual Anthropology, Vol. 28, No.1, 2015, p. 22.

51 Walter Benjamin was one of the first to critically theorize photography as a social phenomenon, persuasively describing the power of the medium to shift perceptions. See Walter Benjamin, The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility and Other Writings on Media, Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 2008.

52 T. J. Brady, “Roger Fenton and the Crimean War”, History Today, Vol. 18, No. 2, 1968, p. 80.

53 Ibid., p. 76. For a recent counter-argument to that which Brady references, see Sophie Gordon, Shadows of War: Roger Fenton's Photographs of the Crimea, 1855, Royal Collection Trust, London, 2017.

54 The publisher intended to turn a profit through the sale of postcards and portfolios, which were popular forms of circulating photographic prints at the time. See T. J. Brady, above note 52; Beaumont Newhall, The History of Photography: From 1839 to the Present, Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1982; J. Marwil, above note 2.

55 T. J. Brady mentioned several others who were commissioned to take photographs of the Crimean War: Richard Nicklin in 1854, and “two young officers – Ensigns Brandon and Dawson” in the spring of 1855. None of their photographs appear to have survived to the present. T. J. Brady, above note 52, p. 76.

56 S. Gordon, above note 53, p. 40.

57 Fenton travelled with his assistant by ship to Sevastopol, where they converted a four-horse-drawn wine cart into a mobile darkroom. Reproductions of Fenton's photographs were circulated later in 1855 among the British Royal Family and Napoleon III's court. An exhibition containing 312 prints was put on public display to thousands in both London and Paris. See T. J. Brady, above note 52, pp. 76, 83; S. Gordon, above note 53, p. 40.

58 J. Marwil, above note 2, p. 32.

59 B. Newhall, above note 54, p. 85.

60 The title was taken from the moniker that soldiers had given to another valley in Sevastopol. The nickname referenced both Psalm 23 and Tennyson's popular 1854 poem “Charge of the Light Brigade”, based on the Battle of Balaclava that took place before Fenton arrived.

61 Michael Zhang, “Famous ‘Valley of the Shadow of Death’ Photo Was Almost Certainly Staged”, PetaPixel, 1 October 2012, available at: https://petapixel.com/2012/10/01/famous-valley-of-the-shadow-of-death-photo-was-most-likely-staged/.

62 Quoted in B. Newhall, above note 54, p. 85.

63 Judith Butler, Frames of War: When Is Life Grievable?, Verso, London and New York, 2009, p. 77.

64 Ibid. See also Stephen D. Reese, “Framing Public Life: A Bridging Model for Media Research”, and James Tankard, “The Empirical Approach to the Study of Media Framing”, in Stephen D. Reese, Oscar H. Gandy and August E. Grant (eds), Framing Public Life: Perspectives on Media and Our Understanding of the Social World, Lawrence Erlbaum, Mahwah, NJ, 2003.

65 Cambridge University Library, “The Crimean War Letters of Captain Blackett”, Cambridge University Library Special Collections, 2012, available at: https://specialcollections-blog.lib.cam.ac.uk/?p=2308.

66 J. Butler, above note 63.

67 William Johnson, “Combat Photography during the Franco-Austrian War of 1859”, 21 August 2017, available at: https://vintagephotosjohnson.com/2012/02/18/combat-photography-during-the-franco-austrian-war-of-1859/; see also J. Marwil, above note 2. The First Italian War of Independence (1848–49) was followed a decade later by the Second Italian War of Independence, also known as the Franco-Austrian War (1859). The Battle of Solferino was the final battle in these wars. See C. Moorehead, above note 32.

68 W. Johnson, above note 67.

69 Stereographs fell out of favour at the end of the nineteenth century as the technology was not easily adaptable for commercial consumer cameras. As aid organizations today turn to techniques such as 360-degree photography and virtual reality, it would seem that 3-D technology is ripe for a comeback. The affective force of these technologies remains to be seen, but will likely emulate the pattern of historical technological innovations, including the stereograph.

70 W. Johnson, above note 67.

71 The photographs attributed to Jules Couppier and reproduced here have been researched by Janice Schimmelman, who has also researched Claude-Marie Ferrier, another contemporary photographer considered the possible creator of these stereographs. Based on a variety of factors including handwriting comparison, Schimmelman concludes that these images are by Couppier. The Couppier and Gaudin Brothers images are reproduced with permission from the personal holdings of photographic historian William G. Johnson. See John B. Cameron and Janice G. Schimmelman, The Glass Stereoviews of Ferrier and Soulier, 1852–1908, Collodion Press, Rochester, MI, 2016; Janice G. Schimmelman, Jules Couppier: Glass Stereoviews, 1853–1860, Collodion Press, Rochester, MI, 2018.

72 W. Johnson, above note 67.

73 H. Dunant, above note 4, pp. 53–54.

74 Oliver Wendell Holmes, “Sun-Painting and Sun-Sculpture: With a Stereoscopic Trip Across the Atlantic”, The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 45, 1861, p. 27; see also J. Marwil, above note 2.

75 O. W. Holmes, above note 74, p. 27.

76 Ibid.

77 Ariella Azoulay, Civil Imagination: A Political Ontology of Photography, Verso, London, 2012, p. 65.

78 Raymond Williams, The Long Revolution, Encore Edition, Broadview Press, Peterborough, 1961.

79 Ibid., p. 64.

80 Ibid., p. 65. Art historian Peter Burke refers, similarly, to the distortions or artistic license of artistic creations themselves, which are of prime interest to historians; contained within them are the beliefs, ideologies and perceptions of an era. Burke goes on to explain that images can be understood as historical agents, in the way they influence perceptions of historical events. See Peter Burke, Eyewitnessing: The Uses of Images as Historical Evidence, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL, 2001, pp. 30, 145.

81 R. Williams, above note 80, p. 65.

82 The half-tone press, which would facilitate the reproduction of photographs onto paper, was still several decades away; Fenton's photographs were circulated through exhibitions and lantern lectures, and translated into woodblock prints for use in newspapers, a process which further editorialized and sanitized his pictures.

83 “Miscellaneous: Photographic Incidents”, Photographic News, Vol. 2, No. 37, 20 May 1859, p. 129.

84 J. L., “Photography at the Seat of War”, Photographic News, Vol. 2, No. 44, 8 July 1859, p. 208.

85 Ibid.

86 Ibid.

87 Ibid.

88 J. L., above note 48, p. 183.

89 The Journal de Genève (1826–1991) did not reproduce prints to illustrate its newspaper; it did, however, reproduce photographic language. It was common practice to transcribe, with the use of the telegraph, accounts from other foreign newspapers. Dunant would have been reading the graphic accounts reproduced in this journal and would have been getting additional information about distant events from people within his transnational social network.

90 The New York Times was founded in 1851.

91 Marwil, Jonathan, “The New York Times Goes to War”, History Today, Vol. 55, No. 6, 2005, p. 47Google Scholar.

92 Ibid., p. 48.

93 Ibid., p. 52.

94 In forming mental images, Dunant's European readers would also have been referencing the many illustrated newspapers and a visual arts tradition that made use of photography (including several popular panorama paintings of the Battle of Sevastopol, such as Jean-Charles Langlois’ two Bataille de Sébastopol paintings of 1855 and 1856), or even their own first-hand memories of recent battles in Europe. See John Hannavy, “Crimea in the Round”, History Today, Vol. 54, No. 9, 2004.

95 Mathew Brady was a commercial photographer in New York at the time that the Civil War began. He hired upwards of twenty photographers, or camera operators, to make visual records of various aspects of the war's battles. Among the most well known of these were Alexander Gardner and Timothy H. O'Sullivan.

96 P. Burke, above note 82.

97 The Photographic News reported: “[W]e know that most of the subaltern officers figure largely in the collections of portraits which have been made. It is the fashion to have one's portrait taken in camp.” See “Miscellaneous”, above note 85, p. 129.

98 Quoted in Susan Moeller, “Photography, Civil War”, available at: www.encyclopedia.com/defense/energy-government-and-defense-magazines/photography-civil-war. Cara Finnegan provides invaluable insight into the rising importance of photography in the everyday lives of a growing audience of visual spectators in this mid-nineteenth-century moment, which she characterizes as “a period when photography became a dominant medium of cultural life”. She also points out the difficulty of locating reactions and commentary from this audience, as these were not recorded or valued as historically relevant at the time. See Cara A. Finnegan, Making Photography Matter: A Viewer's History from the Civil War to the Great Depression, University of Illinois Press, Urbana, IL, 2017.

99 J. Marwil, above note 2, p. 35.

100 From its earliest years, the Red Cross movement mobilized photography, but it was not an adopter of atrocity photographs and did not participate in what would later be characterized as a trade in the visuals of suffering in the way other aid groups or industries might. It has been argued that institutions like the Red Cross did not have to display such images as supporters could “imagine” them when referenced circuitously. Indeed, images of suffering, be they photographs or prints of another sort, were prominent in the surrounding contemporary context, including evangelical pamphlets and lantern lectures, the commercial “yellow press”, and pulp fiction. As noted by Rozario, “phantom spectacles of suffering [can be] conjured up imaginatively even as they are renounced rhetorically”. K. Rozario, above note 22, p. 443.