The Taking of Vimy Ridge

William Ivor Castle took striking pictures of the Canadian Expeditionary Force during the First World War. Some were accurate depictions of his subjects, while others were staged or composites of different images.

The newspaper photographer had been hired by Baron (later Lord) Beaverbrook — head of the Canadian War Records Office — to document the Canadian war effort for posterity and propaganda. The goal? Bring audiences closer to the faraway war so they would rally around the troops.

The book’s title comes from the most well-known of his composite pictures, but writer Carla-Jean Stokes goes beyond that image to offer a full sense of Castle’s efforts and their cultural impact. Photography was still in its early days, and Stokes shares how it was embraced both by soldiers and people in power, who used it to create a specific narrative. Stokes doesn’t condemn Castle; instead, she lays bare what he did and how. The result is a guide to visual communication in that era — and, in a sense, this one, with its own reality- and truth-bending techniques.