This 1917 photograph of camels at a watering point at Khabrat Ajaj demonstrates Lawrence’s ability to embody the sublime. (Imperial War Museums)
In “Seeing Arabia,” noted World War I authority George Thompson explores the visual and historic dimension of the storied British Army colonel’s work
T. E.Lawrence is best remembered for his representation in the 1962 award-winning film, “Lawrence of Arabia,” starring Peter O’Toole. The film was based on Lawrence’s memoir, “Seven Pillars of Wisdom” (1926), an account of the British Army Colonel’s experiences as a military advisor to Bedouin forces during the Arab Revolt of 1916 to 1918 against the Ottoman Empire.
Thanks to the availability of the portable handheld cameras which soldiers took with them to the front, the First World War was the first war to produce a visual record made by those who fought it, and T. E. Lawrence was one of the most prolific.
In his new book, “Seeing Arabia: The Personal Photographs of Lawrence of Arabia,” Kansas City-based professor and World War I authority George Thompson offers a detailed study of roughly 135 of Lawrence’s more than 340 photographs, drawn primarily from the collection of the Imperial War Museums in London.
It is the first publication since 1939 in which such a large number of Lawrence’s photographs have appeared together, and the first to evaluate his photographs as visual and historic objects. Thompson is well equipped for this task, holding graduate degrees in both modern European history and fine arts.
Thompson embeds each photograph in a narrative of Lawrence’s participation in the Arab Revolt. He identifies the location of each image (maps included) and includes detailed descriptions which enable readers to appreciate what he saw and experienced. His photographs include landscapes, oases, camp life, historic moments, battlefields, Turkish prisoners and Arab personalities.
Thompson also offers insights into the techniques Lawrence used, the challenges and complexities in the construction of his images, and what Lawrence thought was important to record. His goal, Thompson notes, is to “give us a new appreciation of Lawrence as a visual thinker and provide us with the means to better understand this man and his war.”
In one instance, Thompson calls the readers’ attention to the photographs Lawrence took in November 1917 at Azrak and Kharaneh. What makes them so revealing, Thompson explains, is Lawrence’s choice of subjects — in one instance a pond and its natural surroundings, in the other, an old fort — and how he chose to photograph them. “They are revealing,” Thompson writes, “in that we see moments when, even in this trying time, he allowed the location to awaken a desire to experience ‘sensation and mind.’”
In his essay, “Post-script: T. E. Lawrence and the imperial sublime,” contributor Jay Winter, professor of history emeritus at Yale, helps explain Lawrence’s notions of the “sublime” as “a space of awe beyond the beautiful.” He goes on to note how Lawrence’s “sense of being dwarfed by the desert, by its aridity and its archaic power is omnipresent.”
Asked to identify an image embodying these notions, Thompson pointed to a 1917 photograph of camels at a watering point at Khabrat Ajaj as a perfect representation of Winter’s criteria of the “sublime.”
Similarly, Lawrence’s 1916 image “Camels at a Well at Bir Masturah, Just North of Rabegh” implies more than what is seen, offering, Thompson writes, a “candid view that captures the moment but tells us a lot more than what meets the eye. The setting is shown; there is a sense of solitude; and the vastness of the space is before us, but yet a mystery.”
“Seeing Arabia” opens with a Foreword by Alan Wakefield, head of First World War & Early 20th Century Conflict at the Imperial War Museum Institute, in which the author contextualizes Lawrence’s activities within the role of photography during World War I. Following Winter’s “Post-script,” the back of the book includes extensive research notes and bibliography. It was published by Lorenzo de’ Medici Press in association with the T. E. Lawrence Society, of which Thompson is a member of the governing committee.
“Seeing Arabia” is available at the National WWI Museum and Memorial store.
