Drawing on the photographic material preserved at the ICRC, this study examines women's experience as voluntary nurses during the Great War. The importance that the representation of the nurse acquired in the visual culture produced in warfare is explained, as is the setting up of a recruiting campaign launched by the national Red Cross committees that was aimed at training the female population as sanitary staff. An analysis of the most recurrent issues associated with the photographs in which nurses were portrayed during WWI will allow us not only to evaluate the impact that this conflict had in the standardisation of nursing care practices, but also to think about the propagandistic dimension involved in the representation of the women, who sacrificed their lives to nurse the wounded soldiers on the front.