page_title: Ernest Brooks (photographer)
section_title: Early life
hierarchical_section_title: Ernest Brooks (photographer) / Early life
caption_attribution_description: British infantry from The Wiltshire Regiment attacking near Thiepval, 7 August 1916, during the Battle of the Somme. Comment&#160;: This could be either the 1st Battalion, part of 7th Brigade, 25th Division, or the 6th Battalion, part of 58th Brigade, 19th Division. Both battalions took part in operations of Battle of Pozières and Battle of Mouquet Farm.
context_page_description: Ernest Brooks was a British photographer, best known for his war photography from the First World War. He was the first official photographer to be appointed by the British military, and produced several thousand images between 1915 and 1918, more than a tenth of all British official photographs taken during the war. His work was often posed and formal, but several of his less conventional images are marked by a distinctive use of silhouette. Before and immediately after the war he worked as an official photographer to the Royal Family, but was dismissed from this appointment and stripped of his official honours in 1925, for reasons that were not officially made public.
context_section_description: Brooks was born on 23 February 1876 at Draycott Moor near Faringdon, the son of a farm labourer. He grew up near Windsor, Berkshire, where his father afterwards worked in the Great Park, and as a child frequently encountered members of the Royal Family.
  After leaving school in 1890, he worked as a boy on the estates, where one of his duties was to look after a mule given to Queen Victoria by Lord Kitchener. In 1892 he enlisted in the 3rd Dragoon Guards, and after leaving the army joined the Glamorganshire Yeomanry as a volunteer.
caption: A front-line combat photograph: soldiers of the Wiltshire Regiment going "over the top" on 7 August 1916, during the Battle of the Somme.[1]
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