Journal article 784 views
Visualizing Wartime Destruction and Postwar Reconstruction: Herbert Mason’s Photograph of St. Paul’s Reevaluated
Tom Allbeson
Journal of Modern History, Volume: 87, Issue: 3, Pages: 532 - 578
Swansea University Author: Tom Allbeson
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DOI (Published version): 10.1086/682677
Abstract
The article highlights the need for a sustained and critical engagement with photography as primary material, outlining an approach to press photographs for the research and writing of contemporary European history in particular. An interdisciplinary model of the published photograph is proposed, dr...
| Published in: | Journal of Modern History |
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| ISSN: | 00222801 |
| Published: |
2015
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| Online Access: |
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| URI: | https://cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa23840 |
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| Abstract: |
The article highlights the need for a sustained and critical engagement with photography as primary material, outlining an approach to press photographs for the research and writing of contemporary European history in particular. An interdisciplinary model of the published photograph is proposed, drawing on and explaining the pertinence of four key concepts: discourse, visuality, agency and the mobility of the photograph. I assert that the historical study of press photographs should approach and analyse the photographic image as a discursive and intentional visual object in use. This interdisciplinary model of the published photograph is then employed in a detailed examination of the publication and appropriation of Herbert Mason’s iconic photograph of St Paul’s taken in December 1940. Although Mason’s iconic photograph is by itself ambiguous, its repeated publication in a number of determinate contexts has resulted in a contested significance which—if carefully adumbrated—illuminates key cultural values at stake in debates about the air war, postwar reconstruction and the social contract in Britain. Tracing the image across seven decades, I argue that images are as much agents of history as are ideas, institutions and individuals. |
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| College: |
Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences |
| Issue: |
3 |
| Start Page: |
532 |
| End Page: |
578 |