Oldal 56 [56]
54
Dagnostaw Demski
recording impulse” (the photographic impulse to save moments from oblivion) ap¬
pears in the time of war; in addition, this impulse comes in order to map the events
that are part ofthe human experience of the time. In this approach it is significant
who (from which side of the conflict) takes the pictures. All sides admit that there
is destruction and cruelty in war, and yet they advocate/promote, selectively and
constructively, different ways of how the representations of this destruction may be
aestheticised.
Photography is used to recreate the atmosphere of war and its various expe¬
riences. It is interesting to observe how these experiences are expressed through
images. As we know, photography was used in various ways: to document the
events of war, to achieve propaganda aims (photographers employed by the state
used it to manipulate the public), to recruit people for the army, to invoke patriotic
sentiments, etc. Other functions were based on war bringing about the experience
of destruction, devastation and suffering’.
My aim is to explore what the photographers who worked with such specific
themes were willing to see and to imagine. There are several iconoclastic motifs
that can be taken into account here. Aside from the classic iconoclastic representa¬
tions, I am going to present various categories of picture that can also be considered
forms of iconoclastic others: scenes of destruction, incursion of invading forces and
retreat of defending troops, prisoners of war, images of control, documentation or
recollection, pictures of witnesses in front of scenes of destruction (taken by the in¬
vaders), images of ruins and debris (after the enemy left). I present visual materials
from Central Europe—mainly from Poland, but also from Belarus, Ukraine, and
the Baltic states—in order to discuss these issues.
Iconoclastic Gestures and Photography
‘This study is grounded in the discipline of visual anthropology. I pose the following
question: what actions in time of war assume an iconoclastic character. My aim is
to analyse iconoclastic gestures depicted in photographic material that reveal the
depth of the photographers’ representational struggles to articulate wartime change.
I treat the image not only as a sign’, a process? or an activity, but also as a unique
gesture. I define a gesture’ to be a visible action or utterance’, a kind of language,
' As Susan Sontag warned, we reach a level of satiety and lose our capacity to react and respond (2010).
? A sign in the sense of an object or entity whose occurrence indicates the probable presence of something
else.
> As Krzysztof Olechnicki stated “photography (...) stopped being a product of fieldwork, and becomes
a process through which the researcher comes to understanding of the world and people” (Olechnicki
2003: 9).
* The notion of gesture emerged as a technical concept in rhetoric but is also relevant to the interpretation
of images.
> Concluding the May Symposium of Gesture (2004) Paul Bouissacsaid that “gestures can be considered from
the point of view of evolution, development, interaction, transmission and transformation, and used inasense
of intentional communicative body movements to the reference to ritualistic or technical skills” (2006: 10).