‘Something useful in a National sense’: Percy Hennell’s Surgical and Nationalist Colour Photography, 1940–1948

Abstract

Photographer Percy Hennell (1911–1987) is best known for his colour images of Second World War reconstructive surgery, but he also illustrated the books British Women Go to War (1943) by J. B. Priestley and An English Farmhouse and Its Neighbourhood (1948) by Geoffrey Grigson and John Piper. Seemingly disparate, these three groups of 1940s photographs are united by the devices – specifically British colour, the before-and-after trope and detailed documentation – that showcase British nationalisms and anxieties. Hennell’s more commercial projects help to provide a better understanding of the role of propaganda and nationalism in Second World War surgical imagery.