Francis Gregson

Francis Gregson is described in the collections that hold this material as Employment is recorded with St James's Gazette.

Gregson worked across photographer and war correspondent. This article rests on 23 scholarly references drawn from named institutional registers. Every statement below returns to a source shown in the evidence panel; where the record is silent or divided, the article says so instead of resolving it.

• Illustration — Director of Military Intelligence, Sir Francis Wingate, interrogating Sudanese prisoner Emir Mahmoud, with camera on tripod in the background During the reconquest of the Sudan, Gregson was a correspondent for the St. James’s Gazette. As a veteran of the campaign against the Mahdists, he already knew the country. In January 1885, he had been involved in the battle of Abu Klea that was meant as support for the failed attempt to rescue General Gordon, who was trapped in Khartoum. His album of 232 silver gelatin print photographs, titled 'Khartoum 1898, documents the Anglo-Egyptian campaign against the Sudanese Mahdist State as a visual narrative. This narrative started in Alexandria, Egypt, and followed the troops southwards to Omdurman, where the decisive battle took place on 2 September 1898. During the Anglo-Egyptian conquest of Sudan, Gregson was one of the photographers who documented the advance of British troops and the victory of Lord Kitchener's troops over the Mahdist forces. These historical photographs in the archives of the National Army Museum, London, include not only numerous pictures of the Anglo-Egyptian troops and their officers, but also photographs of defeated Sudanese, such as the commander at the Battle of Atbara, Emir Mahmoud. • Illustration — Egyptian troops looting from dead soldiers, 1898 In Gregson's images, corpses, moving distant enemies and approaching death were captured in the instant. Some of these pictures show prisoners with traditional weapons and dress, like the characteristic jibba coats, – items that were later exhibited in British museums as trophies of war. Furthermore, there are several photographs of dead bodies, some of them being plunder ed by Egyptian soldiers, like the picture entitled 'Looting after the Battle in the original album. • Illustration — Defiant Baggaras in front of The Mahdi's tomb, after the Battle of Omdurman, 1898 Another photograph shows defeated Sudanese standing in front of the bombed-out tomb of the Mahdi in Omdurman. Looking back on his personal experience as a newspaper reporter on Kitchener's expedition, Winston Churchill stated in his book, The River War: An Historical Account of the Reconquest of the Soudan (1899), that ‘[t]his place had been for more than ten years the most sacred place and holy thing that the people of the Soudan knew." After his return to London, Gregson produced an album of photographs taken with his Kodak camera. Copies were presented to Queen Victoria as well as to the commanding officers who had overseen his documentary photography in Sudan. • Illustration — Emir Mahmoud, a Mahdist leader, as prisoner after the Battle of Atbara • Illustration — A group of Hadendoa Sudanese prisoners bearing weapons. An Egyptian military policeman stands in the foreground.

In her study entitled "Viewing Violence in the British Empire: Images of Atrocity from the Battle of Omdurman, 1898", historian Michelle Gordon published a detailed discussion of Gregson's photographs. Taken after the Battle of Omdurman on 2 September 1898, the final and decisive battle of the Anglo-Egyptian Reconquest of the Sudan (1896–98), these photographs constitute an early example of photography by a war correspondent. According to her interpretation, this campaign was "controversial for the methods used against the Sudanese soldiers of the Mahdia, which included the massacring of the enemy wounded and those trying to surrender." With reference to what she calls "atrocity photography", she further claims that photographs from this campaign "have been neither sufficiently integrated into the historiography of the British Empire nor the body of work on warfare and photography. This situation is indicative of wider issues related to imperial historians’ treatment – and at times, sanitisation – of colonial violence." Similar views were forwarded by Paul Fox, historian at the University of York, who published the following comments in 2018: "Through a study of the photographic record of the British campaign in the Egyptian Sudan, this chapter argues that the unprecedented presence of the recently invented Kodak transformed how armed conflict could be represented to domestic audiences, and that this was recognised by Anglo-Egyptian leaders, who staged events associated with the conclusion of the campaign with the camera in mind, in pursuit of impression management in Britain." In an earlier article of 2015, titled "Spoils of War in Egypt, 1798-1882", Fox commented on photographs attributed to Gregson as well as on looted objects and war trophies like swords, banners or uniforms, with regard to the effect these historical objects had on public opinion in Great Britain: Referring to the wider question of the responsibility of photographers in times of war and atrocities, both from the beginnings of photography and up to present times, Michelle Gordon gave the following assessment: "I argue that the album represents a part of the atrocity and, by extension, in his actions as photographer, Gregson is part of these events as a perpetrator of violence." In his book The violence of colonial photography, French historian Daniel Foliard commented on the character of this kind of war photography as opposed to the images showing battles in earlier times: "This Kodak-recorded annihilation signalled the advent of a form of armed violence that was coldly logistical, even down to its visualisation. The aesthetics of the enticing engravings and paintings of the past were becoming less relevant to photographers: war had become ugly." To make room for self-sufficient images, the written information that still dominated the layout of most contemporary publications was reduced to brief captions.