Shaping the Visual under National Socialism. Press Photography in Austria 1938-1945

Team: Dr.ⁱⁿ Margarethe Szeless und Dr.ⁱⁿ Marion Krammer 
Funding: FWF Austrian Science Fund (Projectnumber: P 35766)
Duration: March 2023 to February 2027, Department of Contemporary History at the University of Vienna

Protagonists of the Austrian Press Photography Scene 1938 - 1945

The research project “Shaping the Visual under National Socialism” examines the press image culture in Austrian illustrated magazines between 1938 and 1945. In a comprehensive survey, the entire professional field of press photography in Austria between 1938 and 1945 will be mapped out: the expelled, mostly Jewish photographers and agency owners will be recorded as well as the photojournalists and central actors of the domestic picture press during the Nazi era. The results will be made publicly accessible in a database in which media networks can also be visualized.

Quantitative analyses - the press image market in the service of propaganda

Another focus of the project is the investigation of the “forced coordination” (Gleichschaltung) of the Austrian press. Which media networks and channels were established by those responsible and how were they used to obtain and publish the desired images? To what extent did agency material from expelled Jewish photographers continue to circulate in the illustrated press during the Nazi era and was it possibly even reinterpreted? To answer these questions, a large pool of contemporary Austrian press photos taken between 1938 and 1945 will be compiled and evaluated with the support of the Austrian Center for Digital Humanities and Cultural Heritage.

Qualitative case studies - visual propaganda in the illustrated press

Based on the systematized pool of images, case studies will be carried out using methods of image analysis and comparison, as well as semiotic analyses of newspaper pages. These case studies will help to shed light on how the medium of photography was mobilized for visual propaganda.