Page 24 [24]
22
Dagnostaw Demski in cooperation with A. Kassabova, I. Sz. Kristöf, L.Laineste and K. Baraniecka-Olszewska
into account their material form, their type, the medium they represent, their
content, the frequency of appearance, and their impact on viewers, we aimed
at grasping a moment when the Other and the othering process entered the
multimedial scene—when both an increasing amount of media, their products,
and the development of technology made representation of reality multimedial in
its nature.
The Multi-Mediatized Other
The volume is divided into sections of thematically related chapters. Each section
deals with otherness in a different way. “Mediating Reality: Reflections and Im¬
ages” concerns the question of reality production by the media. In all approaches,
reality appears as a series of images. The choice of means, images, and frames used
by the variety of media was an instrument in the transformation of an event into
the facts of a so-called reality. Demski focuses on the category of difference, which
organizes the depiction of reality. Discussing the examples of photography in the
years 1945-1970, the postwar period, in socialist Poland, he argues that difference
indicates the presence of a boundary, divided from another reality. Thus, photo¬
graphs may be treated as aspects of local or supralocal connections.
Libera and Sztandara present the photographs from the 1950s, 1960s, and
1970s that revealed the “behind the scenes” actions of ethnographic fieldwork that
according to authors reveal something that should remain invisible: researcher’s
scientific approach and specific experience of being with/encountering the Others.
Libera and Sztandara focus on the contrast between private and public images and
as a consequence they remind us to regard the photo as evidence and perceive it as
helpful in illustrating some cultural patterns and informing about them.
Vaseva presents an interesting case study of funeral tradition—visual presen¬
tation of death and the celebratory funeral ceremonies in honor of the dead in
Bulgarian urban culture since the nineteenth century. These “mournful images” are
evidence of the complex nature of photography and its significance in the process
of converting verbal images into visual ones—funeral photos were the last attempt
to save portraits of deceased members of the family so that “producing” this par¬
ticular visual form, the person could remain “known” and somehow “present” in
everyday life.
Buke-Okyar presents a case of Turkey, where the Arab Other served as an im¬
portant component in the rhetoric over the new Turkish identity as embedded in
post-Ottoman and early republican Turkish public opinion till 1939. This chapter
involves earlier periods than is generally discussed in the volume; however, it gives
insight into the mechanism of producing extension of the eastern European gaze.
As Buke-Okyar claims, negative sentiments toward the Arabs were transferred to
the new republic when the Turkish nation-building project reached its peak and an
exclusively Turkish nation was imagined.