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Accepted Paper:

The Killing Fields of Late Ottoman Macedonia. Competing local and international uses of photography for the ownership of circulating images of atrocity 1903-1914  
Elizabeth Gertsakis (University of Melbourne)

Paper short abstract:

The ‘Macedonian Problem’ of 190314 engaged major political powers, reportage and photography. Popular publishing was active in photography of atrocities. Atrocity photography were used as evidence for injustice, but in a digital age the photograph can no longer be a self-evident ethical truth.

Paper long abstract:

The 'Macedonian Problem' of 1903-12 was the most written about and photographed pre- Great War event of ethnic blood-letting in Europe. Although the use of photography in the Balkans was early, it was the political and territorial struggles that attracted the first mass entry and reportage engaging with photography in the region of the southern Balkans. Competing political and diplomatic intent and hunger for sensational 'news' created a global audience for images (illustrated and photographic) of disaster and horror. Photographs were produced, circulated and converted into columns in newspapers, periodicals and journals as well as books of anthropology and ethnographic researches. Alongside reportage, there was a market which welcomed exploitation of atrocity photographs as propaganda as military and souvenir materials. American, British and European companies made an instant transition from stereoscope images of exotic people and scenic views into genres of massacre and narratives of a primitive and violent 'unevolved' Balkan world.

Atrocity photographs as affective objects of the 'Macedonian Problem' became part of official history as documents of possession despite unclear aetiology. They remain the material of national and ethnic conflict. The question of who owns the atrocity of the photograph is a source of triumph over injustice as well as a revelation of guilt and transgression. The photographic archives of the historical 'Macedonian Problem' can no longer rely on an incontestable possession of the meaning of the photograph. In the digital reality of the present, the photograph can no longer sustain an abstract truth for self-evidence.

Panel P10
Engaging Disaster: Photography on Unsettled Ground
  Session 1