This photograph is nearly 110 years old, but it still creates a knot in my stomach. Tense WWI photo proves that the key to a good image is the emotional reaction it creates

British soldiers attack from a trench. .

Personally, the mark of a good photo is how it makes me feel, and one of the most emotionally stirring images I’ve ever seen was taken by John Warwick Brooke during the Battle of the Somme in 1916.

Brooke was an official photographer with the British Army on the Western Front during WW1, and the image in question depicts the tense moment before a unit of his compatriots leaves the relative safety of their trench to raid the German front line at Thiepval.