Review: Photofascism: Photography, Film, and Exhibition Culture in 1930s Germany and Italy, by Vanessa Rocco

Abstract

Book Review| December 01 2022 Review: Photofascism: Photography, Film, and Exhibition Culture in 1930s Germany and Italy, by Vanessa Rocco Photofascism: Photography, Film, and Exhibition Culture in 1930s Germany and Italy by Vanessa Rocco. Bloomsbury (sb 2022) 216 pp. $31.45, ISBN 1350284246; (hb 2020) 210 pp. $99.00, ISBN 1501347063. Maud Lavin Maud Lavin Maud Lavin is professor emerita at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a Guggenheim Fellow. Her most recent book, co-edited with Ling Yang and Jing Jamie Zhao, Boys’ Love, Cosplay, and Androgynous Idols, was nominated for a Lambda award. An earlier book, Cut with the Kitchen Knife: The Weimar Photomontages of Hannah Höch (1993), was named a New York Times Notable Book. Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Afterimage (2022) 49 (4): 59–63. https://doi.org/10.1525/aft.2022.49.4.59 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Maud Lavin; Review: Photofascism: Photography, Film, and Exhibition Culture in 1930s Germany and Italy, by Vanessa Rocco. Afterimage 1 December 2022; 49 (4): 59–63. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/aft.2022.49.4.59 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentAfterimage Search Fascism is an art built on propaganda as well as economically reactionary policies. In the 1920s, ’30s, and early ’40s in Europe, in its rise, rootedness, growth, and continuance as a political system, fascism grew as a radical allegiance to ultranationalism, to racism including antisemitism, and to dictatorship. It has since been copied and updated in extreme right-wing movements in Europe and the United States, movements that announce their historical ties to the original fascists either indirectly through dog whistles (Trumpism, specifically with Donald Trump’s praising of such American groups as the Proud Boys) or directly with, say, Nazi emblems (neo-Nazis in Germany, even though these emblems are illegal for public display). The term also applies to genocidal dictators such as Vladimir Putin. The art of fascist propaganda has fed, and still does feed, adherence to fascist beliefs such as white superiority. Although modes of production and dissemination, most meaningfully... You do not currently have access to this content.