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54 Dagnostaw Demski recording impulse” (the photographic impulse to save moments from oblivion) appears 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 experiences. 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 representations, 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 invaders), 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).
