International Journal of History and Cultural Studies (IJHCS) Volume 1, Issue 2, PP 47-57 www.arcjournals.org ©ARC Page 47 Humanism and War Photography in the 1930s Visual Culture Erika Zerwes Abstract: This article focuses on the relations between a notion of humanism dear to some European left intellectuals and artists, and the use of photography as left propaganda in the 1920s and 1930s. Photography started to participate in the war at the same time when technique became predominant in warfare. At the first moment, the expansion of this warfare, which left the scope of man to become the scope of machine, brought a challenge to the photographers who wanted to cover the event. At the end of the First World War, the apology of technique was associated to a position aligned with the nationalist right wing, whereas its opponent, the left wing, based itself on a transnational and humanist discourse. This political culture then established, of polarization between fascist nationalism and European left wings cannot be dissociated from a visual culture which was being built based on the same polarization. We will discuss in this article the relationship between the political and visual cultures specifically in relation to photography. Keywords: War photography; Visual Culture; Political Culture; Humanism. What is conventionally called the modern war appeared, precisely, with the introduction of military technology in the ways of making war. The American Civil War was one of the first in which the military machinery using technology was present in a relevant way. It was also one of the first to be largely photographed 1 . At the First World War, photographic technology was much improved, but representing the event was still a challenge. An example of the difficulty to create a photographic image as close as possible to a satisfactory representation of the war, that is, to the warfare based on technic, is the work of developed by Australian Frank Hurley (1885-1962). He, who was instated as a photographer of the Australian Imperial Force in 1917, described his frustration caused by his attempts to photograph the world conflict: I have tried and tried to include events on a single negative, but the results were hopeless. Everything was on such a vast scale. Figures were scattered – the atmosphere was dense with haze and smoke – shells would not burst where required – yet all the elements of a picture were there could they but be brought together and condensed … on developing my plate, there was disappointment! All I found was a record of a few figures advancing from the trenches – and a background of haze. Nothing could have been more unlike a battle. (Apud HÜPPAUF, 1993, p. 53) His objective as a photographer of that war was to make the Australian participation as visible as the British and Canadian (CARMICHAEL, 1989, p. 60). His equipment allowed him to go close to action, because it was light enough, did not constantly need a tripod, and the optical apparatus was luminous enough for him to record the bombings and their effects; however, he could not put together in his camera viewer one single scene which, in his opinion, represented the event. Therefore to produce one image that fulfilled his objectives, Hurley used parts of twelve different photo negatives to compose one of his most famous images, “A hop over” (referring to the hop from 1 On the relation between the photographic technique and the warfare technique, both in their first moments on the American civil war, Alan Trachtenberg stated: “A striking number of the war photographs call up associations with genre paintings or drawings: staged scenes showing an artillery battery at work, or soldiers relaxing in camp. Of course, a close look will turn up a blurred hand, a slouching figure, a pair of eyes staring blankly at the lens – signs of the camera no amount of composition can hide. But it is noteworthy that the Civil War photographers frequently resorted to stagecraft, arranging scenes of daily life in camp to convey a look of informality, posing groups of soldiers on picket duty – perhaps moving corpses into more advantageous positions for dramatic close-ups of littered battlefields. This is hard surprising, considering the unprecedented assignment – as new to photography as the military actions employing new long-range weapons were now to warfare. The first modern war in its scale of destruction – close to half a million casualties – and in the use of mechanized weaponry, including steel-plated naval vessels, trenches, and, in Sherman‟s march through Georgia in 1864, a scorched-earth policy, the Civil War presented challenges to comprehension in all manner of word and picture”. TRACHTENBERG, 1989, p. 73.