Picturing Displaced Persons (DPs), Exhibiting French Prestige
Photographs of humanitarian aid for European DPs in French-occupied Germany, c. 1945–52
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 12914724 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Laure Humbert (0000-0002-4357-2928, University of Manchester, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2022 |
| Volume | 15 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 208-232 |
| Publication date | 2022-04-03 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of War and Culture Studies (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1752-6272 • E-ISSN: 1752-6280 |
| Publisher | Routledge (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/17526272.2022.2065119 |
| OpenAlex | W4280504198 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 44 |
This article explores how photography documenting humanitarian aid in French-occupied Germany was mobilized to enhance France’s image, against the backdrop of increasing anxieties about its international standing. It draws on images found in the archives of the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration and the French occupation zone , which sat between the ‘official’ and the ‘private’. In doing so, it calls for a recognition of the role of amateur and relief workers photographers in sustaining post-war visual discourses of internationalism and national-self fashioning. Although largely overlooked today, these images play a role in wider debates about what it meant to be ‘French’ in the aftermath of the Nazi occupation. Relief workers and amateur photographers built on and reproduced aspects of the widely disseminated narrative about the universalism of resistance to disrupt images of the zone as a refuge for wartime collaborators. This neglected aspect of humanitarian imagery offers fresh insights into the contribution of these photographers to post-war diplomatic strategies
Amateur · Art · Internationalism (politics · Literature · Media studies · Narrative · Nazi Germany · Nazism · Political science · Politics · Prestige · Sociology · Universalism · Visual arts · World War II · Communism, Protests, Social Movements · European history and politics · French Historical and Cultural Studies · History · Law
Reinventing French Aid
The Making of the Modern Refugee
The Lost Children
Title unavailable
Humanitarian Photography
Jews, Germans, and Allies
Between National Socialism and Soviet Communism
Combattre, punir, photographier
Secular Icons
Displaced persons from Bergen-Belsen
Framing Atrocity
Between art and information
Gazing at Ruins
Photographic Diplomacy in the Postwar World
Visualising Holocaust Child-survivors in Canada
Indigènes after Indigènes
Miners, Masculinity and the ‘Bataille du Charbon’ in France 1944–1948
Vichy in Baden-Baden – The Personnel of the French Occupation in Germany after 1945
Selling France to the French
From facial expressions to bodily gestures
Christian critics of empire
Displaced children of Europe, then and now
Anticommunism in the Streets
Representing and Reconstructing Identities in the Postwar World
Selfhood, Place, and Ideology in German Photo Albums, 1933–1945
Introduction
France, Prussia, or Germany? The Napoleonic Wars and Shifting Allegiances in the Rhineland
Belsen in History and Memory
Restoring the Image of France in Britain, 1944–1947
A Human Treasure
Capturing the Moment, Picturing History
L'« élevage » des bébés à Fécamp (1894-1928)
Internationalism in Relief
The Return of the Republic
Choosing Not to Look
Childhood in the Promised Land
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |