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Living Images and Gestures in Wartime: The Other as an Iconoclastic Figure
soldiers witnessing wartime situations. The extant documents from the period
today appear as particularly interesting research material due to war context.
Roland Barthes claimed that it is difficult to speak of photography and easier to
speak of a reaction to photographs (1995: 129). In practice, creating images of the
Other is a gesture: an act that includes changes or breaking up the former order. If
an image is an act, and not an object, then war images were made to send a certain
message. Production of images of the Other fulfils different functions and empha¬
sises different elements in different times and cultural contexts. What unifies all of
them is the conviction of the communicator about his rightfulness, at least at the
level of narration and persuasion.
The first mechanism that lies hidden behind the practice of creating images of
the Other is an attempt to stand out from the rest. What is at stake here is social di¬
versity, recognition of the fact that we are different, i.e. better (or sometimes worse)
than others. Such a mechanism, motivated by ideology, is related to differentiation
and the sense of superiority that springs from it. Thus, culture creates an opposition
between the primitive and the modern, and, moreover, it attributes to the Other
an acceptance of, or a belief in, false idols and erroneous images. A conviction
arises that ‘we’, the creators of the proper images, are better than the Others, the
idolaters. The next step that ‘we’ take is thus to fight against falsehood, illusion,
blasphemy—against idolatry.
Naturally, the Nazis were not the only ones to photograph reality from the
standpoint of the victor: the conqueror who brings culture, who creates a mission
to civilise the East. Not too many Soviet photographs are known from that period,
but they also documented similar scenes, doing it from the position of victor. The
choice of subject matter during war reflects moments and places significant for the
new order. The victor who creates a new order shows, via iconoclastic gestures, its
superiority. These gestures spring from a need to manifest the supremacy of the vic¬
tor’s culture which, although they may reach a violent form in times of war.
The images are active in various ways—they shock, excite, embarrass, strip of
dignity, etc. A question arises as to why these images are important. Is it so as to
shock, to reject something that used to be meaningful? The act of destruction,
when treated as a duty, has a public character. A soldier documents the righteous¬
ness of the fight, and does not try to free himself from his own past and context;
quite conversely, he takes an active part in imposing the new authority and elimi¬
nating resistance.
The very acts of destruction mean something different than their documenta¬
tion. Images of this type found their place in the press and newsreels of the new
order, in memorabilia from the years of occupation. Sometimes, they formed a part
of the soldiers’ memories, who showed their families, relatives or neighbours from
their hometown from these pictures where they had been and what they had been
doing. An example of this may be found in the film shot by a German soldier from
Wuppertal, who was sent to serve in Poland, in the part of the country that had
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