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Kamila Baraniecka-Olszewska
faked deaths, injuries, and destruction. They imitate WWII photography and they
can only shock because of the shocking character of the actual conditions if they ac¬
curately reflect a reenacted death or the chaos of battle. These pictures are described
as “grasping the war spirit”. As one of the photographers reenactors sees it:
With photography you create an image of reenactment movement and an im¬
age of history. That is why a photographer of reenactments, who claims to be
a professional, has to perform work which can be compared with the work of
photographers from the past (Photographer, male, age 25, Labiszyn, 2015).
However, they record only a simulated war. Original photographs exist, and
they are easily accessible in archives, thus it is time to face the question of the pur¬
poses for why reenactors—photographers imitate them.
The general aim of reenacting photography is, as mentioned earlier, to re-create
the work of war cameramen and to present an impression of the past in images.
This pertains both to the form and to a particular kind of expression. Furthermore,
photography becomes the means of constituting a historical narration. Although
reenacting photography is not as popular and widely known as historical reen¬
actment itself, it thus constitutes a way of narrating the past. In the framework
of reenacted photography this purpose is not realised on a larger scale; however,
historical reenactment itself is perceived as a distinct way of narrating the past (de
Groot 2008), and I would argue that reenacted photography constitutes a kind of
subnarration. It is linked to the vision of history presented by historical reenact¬
ment, but simultaneously, it has its own way of expression.
The effect which is achieved by photographs from a reenacted battlefield
through showing dirty, sweated and full of emotions faces, smoking guns,
moving vehicles and with wonderful, impossible to copy with digital camera,
blurred image, is amazing (Photographer, male, age 25, Labiszyn, 2015).
Reenacting photography underlines different aspects of the past and triggers
different emotions. Although these photographs are not widely discussed, and their
audience comes in few thousands rather than billions, they are becoming gradually
a more recognizable kind of visual narration of the past, at least within the reenact¬
ment movement.
You know, there are those methodological considerations that history doesn’t
exist anymore, it was, but it is gone and the whole reenactment is based on it.
‘This is what we are doing—we have to show it, to show that it existed, to recall
it. And that is why I make those pictures. To recall history (Photographer, male,
age 25, Labiszyn, 2015).