The Story behind this striking Light Horseman Photograph.

 The Story behind this striking Light Horseman Photograph.

Captain Frank Hurley’s photograph of an Australian Light Horseman collecting anemones, was taken in Palestine in 1918. 

Hurley’s obsession with capturing the panorama of war, made him arguably the most innovative photographer of the Great War. 

Upon arriving on the Western Front in 1917, Hurley soon discovered that the limitations of traditional photography prevented him for capturing the war’s magnitude.

 ‘I have tried and tried to include events on a single negative,’ he lamented, ‘but the results were hopeless. Everything was on such a vast scale.’

In response, Hurley developed composite photographs, a merging of two independent images to produce one compelling photograph. Yet his approach wasn’t to everyone’s liking. Historian Charles Bean said it was a distortion of reality. 

In late 1917, Hurley was reassigned to Palestine. Hurley savoured the escape from the eternal fear of death that he had previously experienced. ‘France is hell,’ while, ‘Palestine [is] more or less a holiday.’ 

Hurley began experimenting with the Paget plate technique, a photographic process that the Lumière brothers had pioneered to produce colour images. 

Hurley used this technique to photograph 61-year-old Trooper George ‘Pop’ Redding of the 8th Light Horse Regiment.

The image reveals much about Hurley’s approach. 

Firstly, it confirms him as an aesthete, rather than a soldier. He’s more focused on conveying the sensations of war, rather than using his camera as a political tool.

Secondly it reveals his fascination with the Holy Land, its landscape, people, and biblical links. 

And lastly it shows his admiration for the light horsemen, who he saw as a descendant of the mythical Australian ‘bushman’.