Performative Transgressions: Military Trophy Selfies from the Philippine-American War to the War in Iraq (1899-2011)
Since the invention of the camera, combatants have documented their experiences of war and violence in photographs. Images immortalized by ordinary soldiers became a tangible social phenomenon during the twentieth century; with the Second World War, photographic snapshots turned into a mass medium. My new project, which will form the basis of an international and interdisciplinary collaborative research endeavor, examines performative transgressions of soldiers in private photography through the lens of gender, sexuality, and cultural self-assertion.
Historical snapshots, I show, provide a useful tool for scholars to peel back the layers of conflict, for they offer insight about combatants, the military as an institution, and what historians call “cultures of violence.” Often, servicemen at war cannot recall their actions or feelings during battles or other specific acts of violence. Many may not even remember why they participated in these operations. Considered within their specific historical, geographical, and political contexts, so-called vernacular photography distills the lived experiences of war into a concrete phenomenon. Group photos and self-portraits in particular are a powerful medium for self-expression.
Despite the obvious technological differences between how soldiers at war portrayed themselves in the first half of the twentieth century and our current practices, there are striking similarities in the self-awareness, the playful, humorous character, and the boldness of the motives captured in the images. On innumerable photographs, soldiers depict themselves standing next to a dead body, mocking or “black facing” their enemy, or mimicking sexist gestures while grinning at the camera. Hence Trophy Selfies, as I call them, reveal fundamental dimensions of war, from the intimate perspectives of excessive violence to peer group dynamics and beyond. In short, these photographs raise questions about the legacies of gender at war, but also about the circulation, appropriation, and recoding of these images by post-war societies.
- Project: 2020-2022
- Keywords: War - photography - Sexuality
- Contact : Elissa Mailänder
