German officers POW Playing Chess WW1 courtesy of the W. W. Winters archive

W. W. Winter: Behind the Barbed Wire

Behind the Barbed WireDuring the Great War of 1914-1918, W. W. Winter were commissioned to photograph German officer prisoners interned in camps near Derby, at Donington Hall and Kegworth. Only 54 of the many photographs taken have survived the intervening years.

Although the establishment, operation and eventual closure of the camps is not a new topic of study, original material was discovered and included, along with glass plates found in a box at the Winter’s studio.

The images go some way to illustrate a remarkable and largely unknown story which has been revealed only after much painstaking research.The photographs were created to enable prisoners to reach out to the world ‘beyond the barbed wire’ and they therefore form an important part of the study of the psychological aspects of imprisonment.

The discovery led to the creation of this exhibition, which was first shown in 2019, to commemorate a century since the end of the FirstWorld War. It has been bought together for FORMAT 2025 to enable it to be viewed again within the context of CONFLICTED.The complete collection is reproduced in a book to accompany this exhibition. It highlights the unique lifestyle of these privileged officers, alongside stores of escapes, the catastrophic flu epidemic of 1918 and politics at the highest level.

The principle and more exciting outcome has been the gradual awareness of the true significance of the images. They have been analysed not merely as artefacts to elicit the identity of the subjects, but as artistic creations in their own right.

Participant