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The Meaning of Photos in the Context of Memory and Remembering pictures were most probably inspired by photos that Selleke had taken of the prewar objects and the war-ruined city (Figs 154, 155). In fact, even more impressive, conductive of a feeling of emptiness and silence, are the photos from the 1950s depicting the cityscape after it had been cleared of ruins. This is what people would have felt after losing their homes and loved ones, after the deportations and installation of foreigners in power. Wolfgang Kil once described Richard Peter’s completely subjective images, which were intended as affective warnings, as “landscapes of the soul”. He states that “in these pictures, an entire generation found their experience of the war visually preserved” (cited in Koetzle 2008: 63; Figs 156 and 157). The views of Tartu, documented by Eduard Selleke after the WWII, with fields of ruins in the earlier pictures and the cleared-up desolate panoramas seem ideologically neutral, taken just for recollection, but on the other hand they express the photographer’s connectedness with his nation—a nation characterised by the impotence of the conquered.* Conclusion ‘The same objects—the destroyed Stone Bridge and Vanemuine Theatre, individual buildings, and entire parts of town that had been hit by bombs, the downtown area that had been cleared of rubble—that remained frozen in people’s memory through photographs, became a part of visual history that confirmed the personal and popular memories of the inhabitants of Tartu. Over time these photographs documenting Tartu’s sad reality acquired an additional significance, because they metaphorically expressed one community’s— Estonians —view of history. Over time, the connotations of power and protest emerged alongside their initially documentary value. In this respect, the contemporary anchor in expressing attitudes towards historical photos resembles biographic narratives and memories. Anniki Kaivola-Bregenhgj has admitted that in the case of life stories, the personal and the collective merge into a single memory, taking voluntarily the role of societal memory as well as conscience (Kaivola-Bregenhoj 2000: 44). One of my informants, Kalju Leib, said that the damage recorded on the photographs did not necessarily have point out was responsible for it, although every time a person looked at a picture, that thought came to mind. Thus every photograph of Tartu in ruins that has become widely known has had the semantic function of preserving memories and supporting opinions concerning historical events. Thus, the photos carried more than the period-documenting dimension for the viewers—they acquired an evaluative dimension when looked at from a certain point in history. It was a judgement on the war that Estonia had been wrested into, evaluation of the conquerors and the invaders (the Others). But the photo § Peeter Linnap has made the same observations when regarding the battlefront photographer Donald Koppel as the visualiser of community emotions (Linnap 2002). 357
