Image Warriors and Images of War: War Photographers as Heroes and Hero Makers in the Second World War (D10*)

• Subject Area: Modern and Contemporary History
• Term: from 2016 to 2020
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 181750155

The project will use photography in the Second World War to study a phenomenon of the heroic located at the interface between politics and the media, the military, and omnipresent organized violence. Since 1939/40, war photographers have been stylized into a new model of the heroic warrior, creating heroic images themselves with their photos. The heroes and hero makers at the centre of the dissertation to be written within the context of this project are the photographers of the German propaganda companies. The monograph to be written by the project leader will address the question of why German war photographers, in contrast to soldiers, did not lose their attractive power in the decades leading up to the 1970s.

• DFG Programme: Collaborative Research Centres
• Subproject of: SFB 948: Heroes - Heroisations - Heroisms. Transformations and Conjunctures from Antiquity to the Modern Age
• Applicant Institution: Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg
• Project Head: Professorin Dr. Cornelia Brink