Seeing Arabia: The personal photographs of Lawrence of Arabia

Description

By George Thompson
Paperback

The First World War was unique as it was the first war to produce a visual record that was made by those who fought it. This was possible because soldiers and sailors took their cameras with them. One of the most prolific was T.E. Lawrence, better known as Lawrence of Arabia.

During his service as a British liaison officer to the Arab army and a leader of Arab war bands Lawrence took over 340 photographs from 1916 through 1918. This is three times greater than those of his peers and enables us to appreciate what he saw and experienced.
However, the quantity is not as important as the quality of his photographs and what they reveal about what he thought was important to record.

What is also important about these images is they offer us a new entry point into one of the most complex and enigmatic men of the 20th century. These little seen photographs give us a new appreciation of him as a visual thinker and provide us with the means to better understand this man and his war. Seeing Arabia achieves this by presenting over 135 photographs with his locations, roles and responsibilities at the time. The narrative examines why and how he took them; what he photographed and what they tell us about the photographer.

Over a hundred years from when Lawrence took the photographs only a few have been seen. Seeing Arabia will be the first book to both publish and to evaluate his photographs as visual and historic objects providing the reader with a new understanding of this major figure and offering new insights into Lawrence’s values, motives and especially his effectiveness as a photographer.

George Thompson resides in Kansas City (USA) where he devotes his time to lecturing, writing and developing programs on the First World War. His current focus is on the life of T. E. Lawrence. He brings to this subject his preparation as a historian and visual artist by earning graduate degrees in modern European history and a Master of Fine Arts. Added to these are his over 25 years of experience as a university professor, academic administrator and a record of exhibitions and public programs. Over the last several years he applied his training and experience to the examination of how photography was used in the First World War.