The First World War is a turning point in the history of photography as it was the first war to be documented meticulously in photographs. Official military and newspaper photographers, but also ordinary soldiers and civilians, created millions of images recording event, and life, at and behind all the fronts and in the occupied territories. Given the sheer volume of photographic sources, it is surprising how little systematic attention these have received from historians of the war. Especially given the absence of written records, or memories of war participants such as colonial soldiers, these largely-neglected photographs become even more important.

The workshop will explore the multiple histories, and intense meanings, that cluster around war, colonialism, and photography. By exploring the role of photography for colonial spaces and campaigns, it seeks to open up debate on the role of colonial practices of photography before the war, and to ask how the war not only changed these practices, but also modes of visual representation of "the other" and significant spaces, such as prisoner of war camps. One overarching questions is, what are the long-term effects of such representations in disciplinary and more popular understandings of the war?

The workshop follows on from an event previously held at King's College London in September 2015. It is part of the HERA-funded research project "Cultural Exchange in a time of global conflict" and is co-organised by Larissa Schmid (Zentrum Moderner Orient) and Daniel Steinbach (King’s College London).

Conference Venue:  Zentrum Moderner Orient, Kirchweg 33, 14129 Berlin

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Programme:

09.30  Registration

10.00  Larissa Schmid (ZMO) | Daniel Steinbach (KCL)  -  Welcome and Introduction

10.30  Session 1  -  Photographing Colonial Soldiers

Chair:  Franziska Roy (ZMO)

Stefanie Michels (Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf):  Who is shooting? Photographs of German colonial soldiers before and after 1918

Petra Bopp (FU Berlin):  "A whole world against us." - Colonial troops in private photo albums and the impact of Orientalism in World War One

Santanu Das (KCL):  Photographs of Indian Troops in Europe, 1914-1918

12.15  Lunch

13.15  Session 2  -  Photographing Colonial Prisoners-of-War

Chair:  Elisabeth Tietmeyer (Museum Europäischer Kulturen, Berlin)

Britta Lange (HU Berlin):  Anthropological registration - Photographic techniques in prisoner-of-war camps

Richard Kuba (Leo Frobenius-Institut, Frankfurt am Main):  "When I enter a camp, everyone greets me beamingly" - Leo Frobenius’s photography of Africans in German prisoner-of-war camps and in Africa

David Low (Courtauld Institute, London):  Ottoman Orientalism and the Wartime Lens - The Photographing of Prisoners during the Armenian Genocide, 1915-1916

15.00  Tea / Coffee

15.15  Session 3  -  Photographing Colonial Campaigns

Chair:  Heike Liebau (ZMO)

Nicole Immig (Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena):  Another civilizing mission? The French "Séction Photographique d'Armée d'Orient" in Salonica in World War One

Robert Fletcher (University of Warwick):  "Now you see what we are up against" - Bedouins and borderlands in the photography of John Bagot Glubb

Markus Wurzer (Universität Graz):  Armed with a Camera - Private Photographs by South Tyrolean Soldiers during the Italo-Abyssinian War, 1935–1936

17.00  General Discussion

17.00  End of Conference

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Kontakt:

Larissa Schmid

Zentrum Moderner Orient

(t)   030 - 80307 109

(@) larissa.schmid@zmo.de