Material and digital public spaces: NATO, photography and Cold War narratives
How does photography’s materiality and immateriality relate to public space and raise questions about Cold War propaganda and applied digital history? According to Jorge Ribalta the means of circulation and the public visibility of images constitute the genealogy of a specific cultural public sphere determined by photography: a photographic public sphere. The paper aims at examining the public sphere NATO has produced since the 1950s with the focus on the (im)material aspect of photography, visual technologies and a concrete network of images circulation.
NATO was created in 1949 by the United States, Canada and several european countries in order to provide security against the Soviet Union. NATO invested in the production and circulation of photographs and films to inform, according to official documents, western audience about the communist propaganda. The visual production of the NATIS (North Atlantic Treaty Information Service) followed the visual strategies of the Marshall Plan. In particular, photography was an integral part of travelling exhibitions NATO organized in the 1950s. The Caravan of peace toured throughout Europe in order to promote NATO as an alliance whose members are committed to safeguarding freedom, peace and security. In this context material characteristics of photography like size, mounting, framing, quality of surface promote photography as an object and focus on the physical impact upon the viewer. Propaganda exhibition devices, like photomurals and extended vision, were employed by NATO so as to immerse the public in a visual discourse promoting western ideals and fighting communism.
Whereas materiality played a crucial role in the formation of Cold War narratives, nowadays NATO disseminates Cold War imagery via the official website and social media. Photographs are classified as digital objects and perform multiple roles. They act as documents but also as parts of a visual storytelling following the paradigm of postwar humanist photography. Digital public space is currently the terrain where the history of Cold War is produced by the means of digitization, multimodality and crowdsourcing. Thus, NATO aims at engaging public in historical narratives that seem today as relevant as ever.
Key Words
Materiality
Digitization
Exhibition
Propaganda
Public
Cold War
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Vanessa Rocco, Photofascism: photography, film, and exhibition culture in 1930s Germany and Italy, New York: Bloomsbury Publishing 2020
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Evi Papadopoulou is a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Visual Arts and Art Sciences of the University of Ioannina. Her research focuses on photography and propaganda exhibitions in the Cold War, in particular on the role of photography in the context of NATO exhibitions in the 1950s. In 2016, she received her PhD with honors in Art History from the Department of History and Archaeology of Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, and her topic of research is "The urban landscape in Greek post-war photography". She holds a Master’s degree in art history from the Department of History and Archaeology of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in 2007 and from the Department of Art History and Archaeology of the University of Paris IV-Sorbonne in 2005. In 2004, she received a Diploma in Museology from the Louvre School of Fine Arts. In 2002, she received a Degree in Archaeology and Art History from the Department of History and Archaeology of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki with honors.
She was a State Scholarships Foundation (IKY) scholarship holder from 2009 to 2013 for her doctoral thesis and she received the Ellie Simos Donation in memory of George Simos Petris from the Department of Endowments of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki for postgraduate studies in the field of art history at the Department of Art History and Archaeology of the University of Paris IV-Sorbonne.
She has taught as an Academic Fellow at the undergraduate and postgraduate level at the Department of Visual Arts and Art Sciences of the University of Ioannina from 2020 until 2023, at the Department of History and Archaeology of the University of Ioannina in 2017, at the Department of History, Archaeology, and Management of Cultural Resources at the University of Peloponnese in 2018–2019, as a Research Associate at the Department of Early Childhood Education and Care at the International Hellenic University in 2018–2019, and as a Laboratory Associate at the Department of Creative Design and Clothing at the International Hellenic University in 2012–2013.
She participates in scientific conferences in Greece and abroad and publishes articles in scientific journals and collective volumes (proceedings of conferences of the Society of Greek Art Historians, the European Society for Modern Greek Studies, foreign academic institutions, the Journal of Art History). Her research interests focus on the history and theory of photography, exhibition practices during the Cold War period, and the historiography of art history.
The paper examines the “photographic public sphere” NATO has produced since the 1950s, focusing on the material and digital aspects of photography, visual technologies, and a concrete network of distribution and circulation of images. In particular, photography was an integral part of the traveling exhibition in Europe Caravan of Peace (1952-1954). In this context, photography’s materiality, as a device of propaganda, imposed upon visitors forms of embodied spectatorship. Nowadays, NATO disseminates Cold War images via its official website. Photographs, classified as digital objects, perform a visual storytelling of the Cold War and engage the public in historical narratives that seem today as relevant as ever.