Page 13 [13]
Dagnostaw Demski, Liisi Laineste, Kamila Baraniecka-Olszewska
Representations of the Other
in the Time of War: Does War Matter?
The frankest representations of war and of disaster-injured bodies are of those
who seem most foreign, therefore least likely to be known. With subjects closer
to home, the photographer is expected to be more discreet
(Sontag 2003: 61-62)
Cultural representations of alterity have not lost their significance in today’s world.
The two volumes of the past conferences discussing the portrayal of the Other
(Images of the Other in Ethnic Caricatures, Warsaw 2010, and Competing Eyes: Visual
Encounters with Alterity, Budapest 2013) have borne witness to this conviction. By
studying images of the past, we are also in a better position to analyse those of the
present. Visual representations depend, first and foremost, on the historical period
they are born in (as was the main topic of the conference held in Warsaw, 2010),
on the culture and context of their origin (discussed in Budapest in 2013), and,
perhaps more specifically, on the political climate, for example peace, revolution,
conflict, war etc. The present volume aims to show how the Other is constructed
in a context of heightened political conflict during and after wartime.
This volume, War Matters: Constructing Images of the Other (1930s to 1950s),
describes how we understand the role of war in how the Other is depicted.
However, in the following part of Introduction we would like to point out some
more general questions to which authors refer in the volume and which we perceive
as crucial for the analysis. Some of the authors deal with formal techniques and
means of representation (for example introduced by the increasing availability and
popularity of new media); some touch upon the problem of ideologies and aims of
particular representations; yet others are concerned with social and political changes
and influences thereof. All in all, the interactions between a wider socio-political
context and specific visual representations, as well as the more specific context
(technological development of the new media used in, for example, propaganda),
are at the very core of our interests.
Stuart Hall’s seminal work Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying
Practices (1997) has served as an inspiration for this volume. Following on from
the writings of Hall, we considered it necessary to compare various visual images of
the Other in order to grasp the possibilities and the potential of different means of
representation (caricatures, photography, movies, works of art, and monuments).
‘The existing and newly created imagery started to acquire new layers of meaning,
coexist and influence one another, when looked at in the context of war.
11