They were just like us: AnzacLive digital art brings WW1 soldiers into the present.

AnzacLive - They were just like us

THEY were just like us.

Historical photographs can often portray the subjects as stiff and almost strange — very much creatures of another age.

Yet occasionally one stumbles across images that do the opposite; shots that cut across the years and show the humanity of those pictured, with piercing power.

Photos that make you want to strip away the sepia and pull them into the present day.

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Among the many emotionally stunning collections we have been privileged to see while producing AnzacLive is a trove of 1,000-plus portraits of World War One soldiers, kept by the State Library of New South Wales.

Called the Crown Studios Collection, these were pictures gathered after the war ended in 1918 and copied by the studio, for safekeeping in the archives. The library made a similar call-out for combatants’ journals — many of which have been used in AnzacLive’s retelling of events 100 years ago on social media.

More than any other WW1 pictures we’ve seen we found so many of the Crown Collection subjects looked just like people of today. Not wooden, not alien — charismatic, alive and modern.

And we’re not alone. “People find them very powerful indeed,” said the library’s Elise Edmonds, who curated a recent display.

See past the mono tones and period clothes and study the faces: old, young, smiling, serious, it doesn’t matter. These men could so very well be among us today as fathers, brothers, sons, friends.

To highlight this, digital artist Andrew Belousoff placed some of them in a contemporary settings — work, leisure and, in one particularly emotive case, school.

Victorian-born James Alfred Smith was 14 when the war began — like so many who went to fight, he was just a teenager who would likely still be in class today.

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James’ youthful willingness to enlist reminded us of AnzacLive diarist Bert Reynolds; who at 17 was so young he needed his widowed mother’s permission to sign up.

Perhaps for this reason, Bert has become one of the most popular characters in AnzacLive. You can join him on Facebook here— or meet his mates here. It’s worth it.

On AnzacLive’s main Facebook page, thousands of followers have already seen a number of great galleries and videos by other artists which we have been privileged to share.

We recommend the Ghosts of the Past and Lemnos: Now and Then photos — and don’t forget Cats of WW1. Informative, moving — and cute.

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