Visualising a Community in Incarceration: Images from Civilian Internees on Rottnest Island and in Ruhleben during the First World War

Abstract

This article analyses wartime images created by civilian internees during their incarceration in 1914/1915. Their paintings, sketches and photographs are used to create a sense of a civil community and challenge stories about relentless hostility. As the juxtaposed images from the Ruhleben Camp near Berlin and the Rottnest Island Internment Camp in Australia show, cross-cultural encounters between Germans and Australians were experienced and depicted with striking similarities. Generally, descriptions and discussions of civilian and POW internment were over-determined by propaganda and censorship, but this paper seeks to highlight a more private and humane side of internment, as captured by pen, paint and camera.