Dr Maurice Warot
WWl Stereoscopic Glass Plate Images
[Copyright in all these images: © (2009/2022) Alain Cavaillé & Christopher Long, strictly reserved.]
Version françaiseBy Christopher Long
These extraordinary steroscopic glass plate negative images were taken during the First World War by the French civilian doctor, Maurice Warot, who trained in Algeria and then joined the French army and served in field hospitals close to the French lines on the Marne and around Verdun.
After Maurice Warot's death, his collection passed to his great-nephew, Alain Cavaillé. The full collection is enormous and includes numerous peacetime images of his family, friends, landscapes, etc.
Here we are showing the 244 wartime images which continue to be stored in their 20 original boxes. (Two other boxes contain 65 images, a mixture of small positive prints with a few non-war images). Each box contains about 4-18 glass plates. Each glass plate (6 x 13 cms or 4 x 10 cms) consists of two almost identical images of their subject, taken through a twin-lens camera which simulates what human eyes would see. When projected onto a screen, the two images are superimposed on each other to achieve a remarkable three-dimensional effect.
In 2009, Christopher Long undertook to scan and study the World War l collection. He found that the images were still in excellent condition. Only a few bore any scratches. He chose the better of the two images on each plate and scanned them at 1,200 dpi. He decided not to attempt cleaning the surfaces for fear of damaging them and found that in almost every case the images were greatly enhanced by increasing the contrast and by the addition of a slight sepia tint which reduces the blue 'glare' and has the added effect of increasing the apparent 'depth'. Warot used two formats (6x13 and 4x10) and where possible he appears to have taken two images of each subject.
Sadly, we know very little of the wartime career of Dr Maurice Warot. These images show that he was certainly serving behind the lines in field hospitals in the Marne and Verdun zones. According to the annotated boxes he was taking photographs at Chambry, Villers-Cotterêts, Vassens, Sept-Saulx, Pargny-sur-Saulx, le Château de Monthairons, Crépy, Couvron-et-Aumencourt, Roye, Valleul (? unidentified) and Hautebraye. All these places lie along the French army's front lines stretching from the Somme, around the north-east of Paris and then around the north-west, north-east and south-east of Reims (Rheims).
In 1922, and in following years, he appears to have sorted the glass plates, making brief references to some locations in ink on some of the boxes as well as leaving occasional annotated slips of paper in some of the boxes. However, it seems that the contents of the boxes rarely correspond to his notes and one must suppose that most of the contents of all of boxes have been 'shuffled' at some stage.
We begin to learn something of the character of Maurice Warot from these images. In addition to photographing his temporary field hospitals, and of course his colleagues and their sick or wounded patients, he takes the time to photograph unhappy groups of German prisoners in holding camps.
Obviously he records the endless flow of men, horses, transport and guns heading to and from the front lines, as well as crashed German planes and primitive tanks with blades to cut through barbed wire. But he also records the appalling damage caused by the shelling of villages, towns, châteaux and churches, not to mention the shell damage to his own hospital quarters. We see men digging unexploded shells out of the hospital grounds, dug-out shelters in the trenches and the use of gas 'dirigibles' for aerial observation.
He shows the chaos left in areas of recent fighting and tells us things we might not have known: for example, that canal barges were used to transport injured patients away from the front line – presumably a much smoother means of transport than the clogged and rutted roads.
He appears touched by the lonely and hurried burials of soldiers where they fell on the battlefield as well as the long lines of formal graves of those the hospitals could not save.
And in the midst of the chaos and destruction of war, he spends a lot of time photographing peaceful rural and woodland scenes along the river Marne... presumably in search of some peace of mind.
In 2009, Alain Cavaillé and Christopher Long hoped that all these First World War glass plate negatives would eventually find a home in a major French museum. But it was only on 11 February 2022 that we were able to hand them over to Gilles Désiré dit Gosset, director of the Médiathèque du Patrimoine et de la Photographie, where they will be catalogued and conserved. (See statement by Alain Cavaillé)
Box 01. Warot: WWl Stereoscopic Images
Box 02. Warot: WWl Stereoscopic Images
Box 03. Warot: WWl Stereoscopic Images
Box 04. Warot: WWl Stereoscopic Images
Box 05. Warot: WWl Stereoscopic Images
Box 06. Warot: WWl Stereoscopic Images
Box 07. Warot: WWl Stereoscopic Images
Box 08. Warot: WWl Stereoscopic Images
Box 09. Warot: WWl Stereoscopic Images
Box 10. Warot: WWl Stereoscopic Images
Box 11. Warot: WWl Stereoscopic Images
Box 12. Warot: WWl Stereoscopic Images
Box 13. Warot: WWl Stereoscopic Images
Box 14. Warot: WWl Stereoscopic Images
Box 15. Warot: WWl Stereoscopic Images
Box 16. Warot: WWl Stereoscopic Images
Box 17. Warot: WWl Stereoscopic Images
Box 18. Warot: WWl Stereoscopic Images
Box 19. Warot: WWl Stereoscopic Images
Box 20. Warot: WWl Stereoscopic Images
Box 21. Warot: WWl Positive Images
Box 22. Warot: WWl Positive Images
Note 1 : These photographs almost certainly do not reflect any annotations written on the boxes. The contents have almost always been muddled up since. Nevertheless, they are presented here in the boxed groups in which they were found in 2009.
Note 2 : Many of the images in the albums above may have been horizontally 'flipped' when scanned. It was not always clear which way round they should have been scanned unless there was, for example, writing, a clock or a visibly buttoned jacket as evidence.
Note 3 : Photography of this sort in the early years of the 20th century was complicated and expensive. The camera, the glass plates and the processing were far beyond the means of most people. Each image here therefore represents a large investment in time, trouble and expense. In consequence, we should assume that the photographer chose subjects which, at that time, seemed to be significant – for reasons we should be prepared to explore.
Note 4 : The last two boxes (21 and 22) contained a large number of very small positive prints, mostly derived from the glass plate stereoscopic negatives. Where these are duplicates they have not generally been reproduced here. However, a few of the small positive prints, mostly from 1918 it seems, are not necessarily derived from glass plate negatives and may perhaps have been produced from roll film in a more 'modern' camera.
© (2009/2022) Christopher Long. Copyright, Syndication & All Rights Reserved Worldwide.
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