Pro Deo et Patria

The photographs show the Western Front of the First World War and the destruction it caused to its landscape, cities and villages. The areas covered are Flanders, the Somme, Artois, Champagne and the Argonne, stretching from Nieuport to the river Meuse. The book reproduces more than one hundred photographs passed by the censor for publication, alongside press images of battle and destruction and aerial photographs. It also includes soldiers' and officers' photographic records and numerous stereographic pairs, intended for viewing through a stereoscope, which give a three-dimensional view of trench life and warfare. The images come from the ICM's own collection of original photographs, stereographs, scrapbooks and albums. The book is the catalogue of an exhibition the ICM staged in its gallery to commemorate the outbreak of the Great War in 1914.