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Dagnostaw Demski
tors. Ihe experience of war has many faces; war has been seen and interpreted in
numerous ways.
Another relevant point is who has the right to speak. It is a thorny question.
In the beginning it is the iconoclast who has that right, however, war stories are
“never uncontested and over time, they change as the people who have told them
grow old, move on and pass away. The central point is that the entitlement to speak
about war and violence is in no sense universal. Some have the right; others do not.
The difference between the two categories is a matter of social and cultural codes,
which can and do change over time” (Baraban et al 2012: 32).
With the onset of war a change occurs in subject matter and tone, a polarisation
of judgments and interpretations. The categories of enemy and friend are estab¬
lished, the enemy is openly attacked, caricatures gain sharpness, and censorship
may restrict some subjects. There is a shift in power, a new order appears, the docu¬
mentation of triumph and disaster—they all become reflected in photography. War
excesses are also documented. The image of the Other in photography gains new,
characteristically expressive, shapes. It seems worth analysing the subjects—the
Others—who became the objects of attack.
If an image can be nothing in itself but only the screen onto which the author
projects his or her sentiments, let us consider who may—the iconoclast or some¬
one else—project, what may be projected and what could be ‘broker’ in particular
photos.
Generally speaking, in the context of iconoclastic gestures, images may be
divided into those charged with power and those that are offensive (these are not
mutually exclusive categories). An example of the former, the cross commemorating
the Polish insurgents from the January Uprising (1863), erected in Gorlice, Poland,
is shown in Figure 13. The actions of the Nazis, who destroyed the cross in 1940,
may be seen as a gesture of disrespect towards, or denial of, local collective memory,
of defiling the honour of the insurgents buried there, and thus an attack on the
character embodied in the living image of past glory and sacrifice. The message
could be intended to destroy hope and strip this locality of its past glory. How
effective it was, we cannot say.
Let us look at another example on Figure 14, depicting the burning of portraits
of Marx in Narva (Estonia, 1941). When the Soviet authorities left Estonia, repre¬
sentations of the much-hated regime became objects of destruction. The represen¬
tations that people had come to hate symbolised the old, repressive order, but they
also symbolised the hated personages themselves who were imposed on the people.
‘The image of Marx became nothing more than a screen onto which something else
was projected. The act of burning the image shows an attempt to free the people
from the power of such objects. The photo registers a crucial moment and encour¬
ages the viewers to believe in change, thus convincing them that the past is history.
‘Thus, such a gesture freed the people from their past.