Most everyone has seen the famous photograph taken by Robert Capa of a Spanish soldier reeling backwards “at the moment of death” during the Spanish Civil War. It epitomizes the power and impact of war photography, not to mention the bravery (or recklessness) of the photographer, who has put himself in the line of fire in order to capture an exclusive image.
But for all those people familiar with Capa’s photo and the many other famous scenes captured by legions of his colleagues in the endless wars of the 19th and 20th centuries, how many know that the very first battlefield photo ever taken in the midst of the action was shot in Saskatchewan by a New Brunswick-born army captain during Canada’s infamous military action against Louis Riel’s Métis uprising?
James Peters, a captain in the permanent Canadian militia at the time of what came to be known as the North-West Rebellion of 1885, was an avid photographer and a free-thinking critic of the Canadian military, who bridled under the command of dimwitted British officers and their penchant for imperial snobbery, according to Michael Barnholden in
Circumstances Alter Photographs: Captain James Peters’ Reports from the War of 1885.
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combat photography
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