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Historical Reenactment in Photography: Familiarizing with the Otherness of the Past?
the work of reenactment photographers.? Furthermore, I conducted formal inter¬
views with two of them, both popular and recognised “reenacting” photographers
within the WWII reenactment movement. What is more, fan pages on social net¬
working sites administered by the two photographers, which contain their photos,
are widely renowned within the WWII reenactment world. The sites are “Reenact¬
ing Photography”,* administered by Lukasz Dyczkowski and “Moldaw Reenacting
Photography”,’ administered by Grzegorz Antoszek. There are, of course, many
more reenacting photographers who make high-quality photos, but I decided to
focus mostly on the work of Dyczkowski and Antoszek, because they represent the
two variants of reenacting photography mentioned above, because they use a va¬
riety of techniques for making pictures, and finally, because they use a particular
medium—the internet—to share their work with others. Sometimes they exhibit
their photographs or use them for books covers, museum leaflets, and calendars,
but the internet is the main medium from which they display their works.
The two chosen cameramen have various backgrounds in which they began
reenacting war photography. Both are reenactors themselves and both originally
were members of groups dedicated to representing Nazi Germany units. They both
devised the idea of sharing the effects of their work on the internet around 2013,
when their Facebook fan pages appeared. Lukasz Dyczkowski is an archaeologist
and a professional photographer, while Grzegorz Antoszek, a historian, is not a pro¬
fessional but started to learn photography in order to be able to reenact its wartime
version. Their general aim as reenacting photographers—the same for both—is to
grasp the ambience of the past and to make people look at their photographs and
wonder whether these are contemporary pictures or period ones, although they
realise this aim in different ways" and using different technology.
Reenacting WWII Photography
Generally, the images that are meant to re-create photographs from the past are
taken during battle reenactments, historical spectacles, group manoeuvres during
so-called reenactment events (in Polish rekonstrukcje ‘reenactments or inscenizacje
> I conducted research on historical reenactment from 2013 to 2015. It appears that photography is an
extremely important element of the whole phenomenon, and it started to be one of the subjects of my
research and, as such, it was present in most of the interviews conducted with World War II reenactors.
However, it was not a separate topic of my study. I also talked, formally and informally, with eight pho¬
tographers who take pictures of reenactment events, although not all of them deal with reenacting pho¬
tography. The people I talked to about photography were of various ages, most were in their forties, and
they were also of various professions. I talked to both men and women, although to men more frequently
as more men than women are involved in the World War II reenactment movement.
* https://pl-pl.facebook.com/ReenactingPhotography (last accessed on: October 10, 2016).
> https://www.facebook.com/MoldawReenactingPhotography (last accessed on: October 10, 2016).
° Which is only partially true, since Lukasz Dyczkowski works also with a digital camera and a project
with analog one lasts for circa two years. However, for the purpose of this description I have chosen his
analog pictures.
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