Pub Date : 2021-08-06DOI: 10.1080/17514517.2021.1952714
Thomas Austin
Jorge Barbi’s book El Final, Aqui (The End, Here) is a collection of 60 beautifully composed, predominantly rural and always uninhabited landscapes taken throughout Spain. All the images share a common secret: these remote locations are crime scenes, out of the way places where Republicans were executed by Francoists during or after the Spanish Civil War. Barbi states: ‘Places are not witnesses of anything, places do not see us; we recreate them [..] common places where apparently nothing ever happened, until the invisible memory they contain fills them with uniqueness.’ The function of his photographs in El Final, Aqui is to precipitate such a shift, to actively recreate overlooked places as abiding sites of memory.
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Pub Date : 2021-07-05DOI: 10.1080/17514517.2021.1940689
Georgia Vesma
Abstract This article explores how one female photographer, Georgette ‘Dickey’ Chapelle (1918–1965), used children’s emotions as visual and rhetorical justification for early ‘advisory’ actions in Vietnam by the United States, situating the presence of U.S. Marines in Vietnam as ‘humanitarian’. Children are a common subject for ‘humanitarian photography’, mobilising an emotional response and justifying certain actions as humanitarian (Fehrenbach and Rodogno, Humanitarian Photography: A History. Cambridge University Press, 2015). War photography studies have explored the creation of a ‘humanitarian soldier' to justify colonising conflicts in the twenty-first century (Parry, Media, Culture and Society 33 (8): 1185–1201, 2011; Kotilainen, “Humanitarian Soldiers, Colonialised Others and Invisible Enemies-Visual Strategic Communication Narratives of the Afghan War.” FIIA Working Paper, 2011). This paper brings these ideas to a case study from the Vietnam War era, emphasising the role of emotional constructions in the production of such ‘humanitarian’ interpretations of military activity. In her article for National Geographic, “Helicopter War in Viet Nam,” Chapelle focused on interactions between uniformed American men and Vietnamese children, whom she portrayed as grateful recipients of airlifts, clothing and medical treatment. Chapelle used children to symbolise South Vietnam, reflecting political discourses in the United States that presented Vietnam as a ‘childlike’ nation in need of ‘rescue’. While many photographs of children from the Vietnam War era were used as evidence of the moral indefensibility of the conflict, this paper argues that Chapelle’s photographs from the Mekong Delta in 1962 portray Vietnam as ‘childlike’ to justify American intervention in Vietnam as ‘humanitarian’.
摘要本文探讨了女性摄影师Georgette‘Dickey’Chapelle（1918-1965）如何利用儿童的情绪作为美国早期在越南采取“咨询”行动的视觉和修辞理由，将美国海军陆战队在越南的存在视为“人道主义”。儿童是“人道主义摄影”的常见主题，调动情感反应，并将某些行为视为人道主义行为（Fehrenbach和Rodogno，《人道主义摄影：历史》，剑桥大学出版社，2015年）。战争摄影研究探索了创造一名“人道主义士兵”来为21世纪的殖民冲突辩护（Parry，Media，Culture and Society 33（8）:1185–12012011；Kotilainen，“人道主义士兵、殖民地化的其他人和看不见的敌人——阿富汗战争的视觉战略传播叙事”，FIIA工作文件，2011年）。本文将这些观点引入越南战争时期的案例研究，强调情感建构在对军事活动产生这种“人道主义”解释中的作用。Chapelle在为《国家地理》撰写的文章《越南的直升机战争》中，重点讲述了身穿制服的美国男子和越南儿童之间的互动，她将他们描绘成感激的空运、衣物和医疗的接受者。夏贝尔用儿童来象征南越，反映了美国的政治话语，将越南描绘成一个需要“拯救”的“孩子般”的国家。尽管许多越南战争时期儿童的照片被用作冲突在道德上不可辩护的证据，但本文认为，夏贝尔1962年在湄公河三角洲拍摄的照片将越南描绘成“孩子般的”，以证明美国对越南的干预是“人道主义的”。
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Pub Date : 2021-07-03DOI: 10.1080/17514517.2021.1927371
C. Riggs
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Pub Date : 2021-07-03DOI: 10.1080/17514517.2021.1927373
Anand Chhabra
Indian migrant workers have been present in the United Kingdom’s county of the West Midlands since the 1930s. Initially, they were mostly men. However, by the 1960s, many of them had married Indian women, which meant that, over time, more families migrated to the region. They found work in the manufacturing, textile and service sectors across an area known as the Black Country, consisting of the Metropolitan Boroughs of Dudley, Sandwell, Walsall and Wolverhampton. While they worked hard to make a living, not everyone was pleased with their arrival. The Indian migrants gradually became subject to racial abuse and discrimination, largely fueled by the two infamous politicians, Enoch Powell, who was MP for the city of Wolverhampton at the time, and Pete Griffiths, who was the MP of Smethwick. Despite this opposition, many local people of the Black Country welcomed the migrants and, soon enough, Desi Pubs, Indian shops, local music and the vibrant local multiculturalism altogether has turned into a source of pride for the people living across the region. As of 2021, 15% (approximately 40,000 people) of the residents of the city of Wolverhampton – the Black Country’s beating heart – are part of the Punjabi community, making it the largest Punjabi community in the United Kingdom outside of London. In 2016, members of Black Country Visual Arts, a local communityled cultural organization of which I am the director, established a digitallybased photography archive with a view to increasing the visibility of UKbased Punjabi migrants in British society. We named it the Apna Heritage Archive because, in the Punjabi language, “Apna”means “ours”. Indeed, we designed the Apna Heritage Archive to preserve private photographs that, nevertheless, can reflect and respond to the broader history of the Punjabi community in the city of Wolverhampton. In order to create it, we set up events and workshops in a range of places in which especially
自20世纪30年代以来，英国西米德兰兹郡就一直有印度移民工人。起初，他们大多是男性。然而，到了20世纪60年代，他们中的许多人嫁给了印度妇女，这意味着随着时间的推移，越来越多的家庭迁移到该地区。他们在一个被称为“黑人国家”的地区的制造业、纺织业和服务业找到了工作，该地区由达德利、桑德韦尔、沃尔索尔和伍尔弗汉普顿的大都会区组成。虽然他们努力谋生，但并不是每个人都对他们的到来感到满意。印度移民逐渐受到种族虐待和歧视，这主要是由两位臭名昭著的政客推动的，他们是当时伍尔弗汉普顿市的议员伊诺克·鲍威尔和斯迈思威克市的议员皮特·格里菲思。尽管有这种反对意见，黑人国家的许多当地人还是欢迎移民，很快，德西酒吧、印度商店、当地音乐和充满活力的当地多元文化就成为了生活在该地区的人们的骄傲。截至2021年，黑人国家跳动的心脏伍尔弗汉普顿市15%（约40000人）的居民是旁遮普社区的一部分，使其成为伦敦以外英国最大的旁遮普社区。2016年，黑人国家视觉艺术组织（Black Country Visual Arts）的成员建立了一个基于数字的摄影档案，以提高英国旁遮普移民在英国社会中的知名度。我们将其命名为阿普纳遗产档案馆，因为在旁遮普语中，“阿普纳”的意思是“我们的”。事实上，我们设计阿普纳遗产档案馆是为了保存私人照片，尽管如此，这些照片可以反映和回应伍尔弗汉普顿市旁遮普社区的更广泛历史。为了创建它，我们在一系列地方举办了活动和研讨会，特别是
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Pub Date : 2021-07-03DOI: 10.1080/17514517.2021.1953763
Gil Pasternak
Abstract This introduction to the special issue “Photographic Digital Heritage in Cultural Conflicts” calls for the development of research into the various local and global political circumstances that have influenced the absorption of historical photographs into the realm of digital heritage, alongside the study of the digital photographic heritagization practices triggered by this very process. Opening with an exploration of the emergence of “the heritage phenomenon”, it analyses how photography, heritage, and the political arena have become interlocked. The discussion then considers how historical photographs, digital heritage and cultural conflicts have subsequently also become entangled since the post-Cold War rising prevalence of digital technology, global interconnectedness and liberal democracy. These related conditions, it is suggested, have informed the growing digital heritagization of historical photographs and the methods used for their digitization, safeguarding and dissemination. Before introducing the individual contributions to the issue, the text therefore argues that the confluence of historical photographs and digital heritage must not be understood as a mere response to technological progress but as an articulation of politically-charged aspirations to capitalize on the common association of photographs with the past, to administer approaches to differing cultural values in a time of imposing liberal-democratic politics of consensus.
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Pub Date : 2021-07-03DOI: 10.1080/17514517.2021.1927367
Denis Skopin
Abstract In this article I consider Russian online databases that collect, digitize and organize film-based photographs showing Russian victims and participants of the twentieth-century political cataclysms, primarily World War II (WWII) and Stalin’s political terror. Most of these photographs are pre-WWII portraits from private photographic collections and family albums. The article focuses on their transformation into heritage assets which arguably occurs once they become publicly accessible through inclusion in online databases created by politically-motivated organizations such as the Memorial society, the Sakharov Center, Immortal Regiment, Immortal Barrack and Immortal Regiment of Russia. Through discussion of the structures of the databases, analysis of the ways in which they display the photographs, and comparison between them, the article shows that the digitization of the photographs is able to offer political presence to missing people through the multiplication and maintenance of their appearances in the public sphere. This presence is used in two different ways. First, the digitization of the photographs discussed here has enabled liberals in Russia to use them for the purpose of commemoration, which has turned them into a form of an online memorial to the victims of political cataclysms. At the same time, the digitized portraits of WWII veterans have been used by the Immortal Regiment of Russia for what can be called “the political mobilization of the dead.”
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Pub Date : 2021-07-03DOI: 10.1080/17514517.2021.1935090
Gil Pasternak
Abstract This article explores the consequences of the digital heritagization of domestic photographs that the State of Israel has initiated as part of its aspiration to settle increasing tensions between traditional national values and modern identities in Israel’s Jewish hegemonic social sphere. The process has been realized through the implementation of the community-based crowdsourcing initiative Israel Revealed to the Eye. Launched in 2011, it was designed to identify valued expressions of perceived national heritage in the photographs kept in the households of Israeli citizens across the country, and incorporate them into a centralized database for their safeguarding, study and public deployment. The article opens with an investigation of the various circumstances that have officially led the state to consider domestic photographs as cultural resources of national significance. As well as examining whose heritage the digitized photographs effectively safeguard once absorbed into the database, it then analyzes how their collection through coordinated crowdsourcing activities has reconditioned definitions and understanding of national heritage in the country. In doing so, the article demonstrates that the digital heritagization of the photographs has assisted in mitigating citizens’ conflictual approaches to Israel’s national heritage without repressing contestations of the dominant cultural status quo.
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Pub Date : 2021-07-03DOI: 10.1080/17514517.2021.1927372
Michelle Hamers
The digitization of archival photographic records is usually celebrated as a process that makes them accessible to multiple audiences who might have otherwise not been able to examine them so easily. It has equally been noted, however, that the very same process may lead to misrepresentations of records and generate evasive perceptions of their origin and historical significance. No doubt, these benefits and disadvantages may have significant implications in any context. Yet, their magnitude is likely to be of even greater consequence when the digitized records pertain to a long-lasting, ongoing violent conflict. The digital creation of the UNRWA Film and Photo Archive – readily accessible at https://unrwa. photoshelter.com – is one case in point. With its production beginning at a particular moment in the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in which its two sides started to engage in direct talks about their shared future, the resulting digital archive demonstrates how photographs originally taken as mere records of institutional activities have, following their digitization, been made into volatile records of unpredictable political consequence. The acronym UNRWA stands for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East. A relief and human development organization, UNRWA was created by the United Nations in December 1949 with the intention of bringing relief and designing work programs for Palestine refugees in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. In May 1950 it became operational and has, since then, offered education, health care, social services and emergency assistance, while working to improve the infrastructure and general living conditions in the Palestinian refugee camps located within the boundaries of these countries and lands. Similar to many other humanitarian organizations, over the years UNRWA has commissioned photographers and filmmakers to document its pursuits, mainly for communication and fundraising purposes. Their works have been preserved in a physical voluminous audio-visual archive. Split since 1996 between UNRWA’s two Headquarters in Amman (Jordan) and Gaza, it contains over 600,000 records, including approximately 459,000 black and white photo negatives, a few hundred photographic prints, 58,000 color slides, 15,000 contact sheets, 75 films, 730 videocassettes and an estimated 80,000 born-digital images.
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Pub Date : 2021-07-03DOI: 10.1080/17514517.2021.1927369
Jane Lydon
Abstract The process of “postcolonizing” continues in the former settler colony of Australia, entailing intense struggles over national identity and culture. Digital heritage plays a key role in these conflicts, in the form of historical and newer archives that have become increasingly important within Indigenous advocacy for recognition. Constructed from more traditional museum, library and private collections, these have become digital assets that now circulate in radically different ways—for example, as proof of identities, and links to Country. Since the late 1990s, as a result of postcolonizing advocacy by Indigenous people and cultural institutions in alliance with rapidly developing digital technologies, a profound shift in management practices has facilitated the assertion of control by First Nations people. These are exemplified by the Aṟa Irititja project, and its replicants, such as the Storylines project at the State Library of Western Australia. Digital heritage and digitized historical photographs in particular are now considered to be key resources for building Aboriginal history and identity, challenging oppressive state narratives and strengthening communities. Despite concerns regarding loss of culture caused by globalization and continuing inequalities, Aboriginal interests have drawn upon this expanded photographic digital heritage resource, to advance their rights through new temporal practices of production, circulation, and consumption.
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Pub Date : 2021-07-03DOI: 10.1080/17514517.2021.1927370
K. Thomas
Abstract This article explores the creation and curation of digital photographic heritage relating to the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa as a political project and examines the importance of the online circulation of historical photographs from private collections for public engagement with the re-opening of unresolved judicial cases concerning activists who were detained, tortured and murdered during apartheid. Focusing on the advocacy and commemoration practices relating to the re-opening of the inquest into the death of anti-apartheid activist Ahmed Timol, who was killed by the South African Security Police in October 1971, the article demonstrates that the curation of photographs included on the website relating to his life and murder can be understood as digital photographic heritage in formation. The article considers how the photographs constitute a form of virtual posthumous personhood and argues that Timol’s digital afterlife moves beyond commemoration and contributes to the ongoing struggle for justice in South Africa in the aftermath of apartheid.
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