Visual Histories of Postwar Reconstruction: Special Issue Introduction

Abstract

This special issue interrogates the role photography played in shaping reconstruction projects around the globe from the mid-forties to the early fifties. The collected articles address contexts and topics, such as demobilization in the USSR, home-building in Australia, efforts to reassert imperial rule in Burma (now Myanmar), attempts to rehabilitate child Holocaust survivors in Britain, and understandings of DP (displaced persons) camps in the French occupation zone of postwar Germany. This introduction provides an evaluation of the multi-dimensional meanings of ‘postwar’ and ‘reconstruction’ and considers ways in which the experience of global conflict underpinned the reconstruction work of political institutions and civic organizations across nations and geopolitical circumstances in war’s aftermath. We emphasize the centrality of photography to public debates and we propose a shared research framework that explores how photographic representations have shaped public debate about the wartime past, and continue to inform cultural memories in the present.