The army's photographic service and its contribution to the iconography of the Great War / Serviciul fotografic al armatei ?i contribu?ia sa la iconografia Războiului cel Mare

During World War I, when Romania sided with the Allies in 1916, the General Army Staff established a special department with professional photographers which provided official and propaganda images. That was Serviciul Fotografic al Armatei (The Army’s Photographic Department). Head of this department was Lieutenant Ion Oliva, an officer of the reserves from the Corps of Engineers who, in civil life was an architect. Oliva chose some experienced photographers for his team, such as Ştefan Mladenovici, Nicolae Cristea, Nicolae Ţaţu, Ion Viţă, Samuel Fucs, Ion Maksai, Carol Ulrich, Virgil Reiter, Moriţ Grunberg, Herman Haimovici. King Ferdinand reviewing the troops or decorating the brave soldiers, Queen Marie in a white nurse’s apron caring for wounded soldiers, trenches, cannons and machine-guns in action, soldiers cleaning and greasing their weapons, troopers washing and sewing their rugged uniforms or eating their soup on the bottom of the trench, young officers relaxing by reading a good book or playing a violin, German prisoners and heaps of German captured helmets, destroyed railway stations and bombed churches or city halls, were common topics for those pictures. As they were working in teams it is difficult to state who was the author of each of those pictures. Some of them were published in illustrated magazines and newspapers. Many prints were sent to various units on the front-line as propaganda material meant to stir the troops’ moral. In spite of the imposed propaganda purposes, most of these pictures had high artistic qualities worth for being exhibited as art photographs.