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Kamila Baraniecka-Olszewska
‘battle performances’), reenactment groups reunions (in Polish z/oty ‘meetings’),
or during photographic sessions that involve both male and female reenactment
(Figs 1-8), which often accompany the mentioned events. In the case of battle
reenactments, a photographer cannot influence the subject of the photography
directly. He or she captures events as they unfold and the dynamics of the reenact¬
ment and can modify only the form of the image—crop it, change the light; later
he or she can edit the image using computer programs. However, some photog¬
raphers, especially those using analog cameras, avoid “postproduction”. What is
more, when organizing a photo session, the photographers have significantly more
to say in terms of photo composition, and the whole subject of such photographs
is more susceptible to the photographer’s imagination.
This kind of rendering imitates actual war photographs by original war pic¬
tures. Photographers make efforts, through taking photos of reenactors and their
actions, to give an impression of the past (Fig. 9). There is an intriguing ambiguity
in their activity. In some way, the photographers should overcome the otherness
of the past’ by re-creating it in images, yet simultaneously, they should reflect this
otherness in photographs to make them look authentic, similar to those of the past.
‘This interplay between original war images and their contemporary re-creations
constitutes the core of reenacting photography. The constant tension between the
past and the present is thus inalienably inscribed in contemporary visual repre¬
sentations of history. Today’s images of reenacted war would not affect viewers if
no original war photographs existed—without originals they would not be un¬
derstandable. Therefore, these modern images are not only a commemoration of
a social (reenactment) event, but they are seen and experienced within the context
of original war photography and general imagery of WWII and also as affected by
the reenactors’ practice, which is embedded in the imagery, as is the whole WWII
reenactment scene.
Reenacted photos are also made within the very same context. Photographers
want their photographs to be typical of the reenacted period and perceived as such.
In this sense they try to make studium-type photographs, to employ the Barthesian
(1981) notion, in a way that they would like them to be a part of historical nar¬
ration.® This manner of taking pictures of war, learned and embodied by reenactors
and also the photographers themselves (in the discussed cases mostly employed by
people making impressions of German Kriegsberichters—war photographers), as
well as their aesthetics, becomes a tool in reenacting WWII photography. However,
only some contemporary photos effectively imitate the pictures from the past, and
making them into credible replicas (Fig. 10) is a task not only for the photographer
but also for reenactors who are depicted in those images. They have to collect all
7 This problem is relevant for the majority of activities in the reenactment movement (see e.g. Agnew
2007; Cook 2004; Crang 1996; Decker 2010; Gapps 2009; Handler & Saxton 1988).
8 On studium and historical narration, see Jay 2011.