Picturing Genocide in the Independent State of Croatia: Atrocity Images and the Contested Memory of the Second World War in the Balkans ( War, Culture (War, Culture and Society)

Focusing on visual representations of genocidal violence perpetrated against Serbs, Jews, and Roma by the pro-Nazi Ustasha regime in the Independent State of Croatia (1941-1945), the book examines the origins and history of the relevant atrocity images, and charts their post-war fate. Drawing on extensive research in national and regional archives and museums in Serbia, Croatia and Bosnia, Jovan Byford scrutinizes the institutional dynamic behind the collection and preservation of atrocity photographs, and explores their contextualization, narrative framing and audiencing in the press, museum exhibitions, books, films, in war crimes trials and other settings, between 1945 and the present. "'Picturing Genocide in the Independent State of Croatia' examines the role which atrocity photographs played, and continue to play, in shaping the public memory of the Second World War in the countries of the former Yugoslavia. Focusing on visual representations of one of the most controversial and politically divisive episodes of the war -- genocidal violence perpetrated against Serbs, Jews, and Roma by the pro-Nazi Ustasha regime in the Independent State of Croatia (1941-1945) -- the book examines the origins, history and legacy of violent images. Notably, this book pays special attention to the politics of the atrocity photograph. It explores how images were strategically and selectively mobilized at different times, and by different memory communities and stakeholders, to do different things : justify retribution against political opponents in the immediate aftermath of the war, sustain the discourses of national unity on which socialist Yugoslavia was founded, or, in the post-communist era, prop up different nationalist agendas, and 'frame' the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s. In exploring this hitherto neglected aspect of Yugoslav history and visual culture, Jovan Byford sheds important light on the intricate nexus of political, cultural and psychological factors which account for the enduring power of atrocity images to shape the collective memory of mass violence."-- Provided by publisher Title Page Copyright Page Contents Illustrations Acknowledgements Abbreviations Map Chapter 1: Introduction: Picturing genocide Chapter 2: Evidencing ‘unprecedented acts of savagery’: Atrocity photographs in occupied Yugoslavia Chapter 3: ‘Gather photographs!’: The birth of the post-war visual memory of Ustasha violence Chapter 4: Why look at fascism?: Visual propaganda and revolutionary justice in post-war Yugoslavia Chapter 5: Ustasha violence through the prism of ‘brotherhood and unity: ’The dilemmas of visual memory in socialist Yugoslavia Chapter 6: ‘The dead open the eyes of the living: ’Atrocity images after Tito Chapter 7: Mobilizing images: Visual memory of the Ustasha genocide during and after the Yugoslav conflict of the 1990s Chapter 8: Conclusion: Atrocity photographs beyond idolatry and oblivion Notes Bibliography Index Introduction : Picturing Genocide -- Evidencing 'Unprecedented Acts of Savagery' : Atrocity Photographs in Occupied Yugoslavia -- 'Gather Photographs!' : The Birth of the Post-War Visual Memory of Ustasha Violence -- Why Look at Fascism? Visual Propaganda and Revolutionary Justice in Post War Yugoslavia -- Ustasha Violence through the Prism of 'brotherhood and unity' : The dilemmas of visual memory in socialist Yugoslavia -- 'The dead open the eyes of the living' : Atrocity images after Tito -- Mobilising images Visual memory of the Second World War and the Yugoslav Conflict of the 1990s