April 12, 2019

Cardiff University

A one-day conference at Cardiff University addressing photography, language and postwar reconstruction, c.1944-49

This symposium addresses the transnational spaces of encounter for the establishment of post-war Europe and the disestablishment of Empire and, crucially, their refraction via photographic images. Looking at post-conflict situations across a range of nations, we consider the contact zones where soldiers and civilians encountered one another as simultaneously physical spaces, language spaces and media spaces. The event addresses the following questions: How were photographs used to translate certain stories across languages or promote certain images about the war and the post-war moment? What questions of interference, mediation and cultural translation do the spaces of exhibition halls or the printed page throw up for the study of post-war reconstruction and its many languages? What are the tools of analysis that we can mobilize for interpreting visual materials and their multilingual contexts?

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