Transcripts For CSPAN3 Lectures In History The Cold War In A

CSPAN3 Lectures In History The Cold War In American Photography July 12, 2024

So last time we are talking about world war ii photography, and the ways that photographers interacted with the war, and tried to capture the war. We ended last time on looking at this image right here the mushroom cloud, that emerged after dropping the atomic bomb on nagasaki in 1945. In many ways, this marks the end of world war ii, but in many ways it marks the beginning of the cold war. Of course nuclear dread, and anxiety hovered over the conflict during the 19 fifties and sixties and even through the 19 eighties to the end of the conflict. Its a fitting image to begin our cost today and we are thinking a lot of photography during the cold war, specifically american photography during the cold war. This is something one could imagine maybe an entire course on the subject. Thinking about general themes in case studies, but also in the meantime along the way to talk about some advances in Media Technology and how newspapers were printing photographs during these years. But before we kind of get into this, lets make understood we understand with the cold war is. And as we get removed from, it becomes more fuzzy and that uncollected. So the cold war was a battle between the United States and the soviet union. It began around 1945, to 1989. Of course the allies were involved as well. So American Allies and soviet allies were involved in conflict. And then we have a central question, whos ideology, whose world view should be the primary factor in post world war ii development. Should it be capitalism, and democracy, with the emphasis on individual liberty, or should it be communism with this desire for an economic and social equality. And this conflict between the two world views, dominate us with the global scene during the cold war. So lets call it a cold war and there is no direct military conflict between the soviets in american, but cold cold war is not exact. You know there are many proxy wars. Whether they were fighting north Korean Forces with soviet support, or vietnam where american soldiers were fighting the north yet dummies, so there was lots of casualties, and brutal regimes that emerged in the cold war. And it wasnt cold, but it was cold perhaps versus america versus the soviets but not cold overall. It ended in 89 1989, with the berlin wall came down. And then a couple of years later, the soviet union itself dissolved in 1991. Putting the nails in the coffin of the cold war. Now we are talking about a new cold war, thats a different class than a different topic. So this is a good image to start our discussion today i think we see aerial photographs and if you already recognize where im going with this, keep those ideas on the side and look at the image. Lets see what we can recognize concrete you know what are some features of this landscape that we can see. Anyone . Yes noah. Buts on the righthand part of the pictures there is a landscape. Yes we see a landscape here some topography right here. Anything else . That trees. Yes we see trees right here, and roads in such right here. So we see basic things. Trees roads topography, some ambiguous looking objects here and there. And so we might even say that this picture in this photograph is boring or does not have any excitement or is not very consequential. So if we think about what this photograph functions and what it depicts, it becomes one of the most consequential photographs in the history of photography, or at least in the 20th century. This photograph was taken by the american spy plane the eu to, high above communist control you cuba. In 1962. And the interpretation of this photograph, brought the world to the brink of nuclear disaster. The world couldve ended because of this photograph. So when analysts took the film, from the you to spy camera, and there are miles of film. They photograph much of the cuban landscape, and then they would go through it with visual aids, to try to identify the signature of soviet missile systems. And they found the signatures, of medium range ballistic missiles, and launcher equipment. And even more launcher quid meant. So this proves at least two american analysts, that the soviets were introducing offensive weapons to cuba just off the coast of florida. Which gives them an advantageous first reich ability. So president kennedy was looking at these photographs at the oval office, it did not have captions on them. So imagine these textural guides right here. And kennedy was bewildered. And he did not recognize missiles, or offensive weapons there, but he was concerned that when these photographs will be presented to the American People, that the photographs wouldnt justify bringing america to the brink of destruction. To the threat of world war three. So he was really, sort of a bewildered with these photographs. So what happened is that people put these captions, and then you could recognize the use in all these identifying or offending objects here. So these do look like missiles now that we have the texas sign to them and this is how they were released to the public, newspapers or television. This is the image is the American People saw for me this is a fitting introduction to understand the topography during the cold war. It is an extreme example, but we can see how there is a desire or necessity for clarity, and for ideas of truth during the conflict. But also we are fighting against ideas of photographys inherent ambiguity. Which we have been discussing all semester. Photographs can mislead and misdirect. Here are two ideas of truth, and photographic ambiguity battling against each other. We can see how photographs like this, how ones ideologies, how ones belief system could make certain images seem like facts. A strange comparison, or a fitting one for this idea is warshaws ink test. You see these and movies and therapy sessions. So is the working of one personal minds. Whether you see an animal or a rug, it is up to the individual viewer. You see right here, your ideology, your worldview would determine how you would see it. If you had a soviet view, you might be skeptical. This could easily be doctored or forged. The war missiles in cuba is a fact. This photograph does not necessarily communicate that idea to the untrained eye is my larger point. This idea of slippery images. Images meaning one thing or another at the same time was captured by the cold war historian john lewis, and thinking about the confllict as a whole. The cold war as a whole with the slippery, ambiguous thing. Always obvious. The distinction between illusion and reality were not always obvious. There is distinctions between fact and fiction during the cold war. Think about nuclear deterrence. What is as important as the actual number of warheads as one has is projecting the illusion of having many. As long as the soviets believe we have lots of missiles, that created a deterrent. Strange ideas about the illusion versus actual fact is crucial during the cold war. Also, it was a cold war between the americans and the soviets. There are hot wars elsewhere. But the idea of a cold war facilitates a battle of images, of information, not so much military forces. In a battle of information and images, topography is a crucial battlefield during the cold war. This is what we will be talking about today. We see this battle, even in Something Like senator Joseph Mccarthys actions in the 1950s in america. We might know senator mccarthy. He charged thousands of communists who have infiltrated the highest levels of american government. To do so, as you see in the photograph, there is a photograph to prove some relationship between someone and a communist. Using photographs for evidence in one of these hearings. I want to turn our attention to this photograph right here. I put the identifying figure at the bottom of the image. Mccarthys assistants distributed this photograph widely in maryland in 1950. It reportedly shows a maryland senator talking really closely and i in depth with an american communist. He suggested the communist ties and communist sympathies. Many argued that this photograph cost him his senate seat. People saw the photograph and said, he must be a communist. But this photograph is a fake. A composite photograph. You see in this feature from life magazine in 1951 that it exposed the ruse behind this. He was listening over the radio. Large these photographs of somebody listening and somebody talking and you have an image that appears, a fictional allusion that these two figures were in some kind of the conversation. Again, we can see how under the guise of fact, a photograph signifies that there is truth and facts, crafty editors, crafty politicians can weave a brandnew reality through the techniques of photomontage. These issues are much more prevalent today with photoshop and other Web Technologies we see wreaking havoc. You can see how certain photographs can be used in propaganda by both sides. The same photographs used by the communist as well as the capitalists. I want to show this photograph to prove a point. I apologize for the graphic nature of the photograph. We see a corpse hanging from the tree in hungary after the uprising. Protesters are fighting against the communist government and communist forces in 1956. That protest was brutally put down with many, many deaths. We dont know who is hanging. Is this a communist hanging from the tree, or a pro democracy protester . We dont know who committed the atrocities. Both sides use this photograph as evidence of the brutality, the barbarity of the other side. The same photograph can serve two masters. It could be for communist propaganda or as well as american propaganda. We see a great example for the way that a photograph can be used to prove two Different Things in this contentious battle of information of images that is the cold war. Questions at this point . Just a reflection of the photo we just, saw it kind of reminds me of the sharpshooter that we saw during the american civil war. That was the sharpshooter that was strike from one location to another, a confederate in one picture and a Union Soldier in the other. These are not. They take on the relevance during the cold war. Any questions or comments . But i want to turn to the lengthy theoretical reading muted today. I told you we will touch on the big points of this important essay. You have read him already this semester. And his discussions on photography, memory, and family and those sorts of issues. In 1961, Roland Barthes was the first person to examine press photography from this angle. We can begin to understand the way that newspapers used photography. In a way that newspapers could mislead or try to influence its readers through subtle twisting in photographic meaning. This is a very first line, the first two sentences of the essay. It is important to get us in the mood of what he is up to. Can i get a volunteer to read this out loud for us . The press photograph was a message that was considered overwhelming, inaudible he is saying it resembles a design product by the map petition and the father of information theory. What you see in the diagram is an information source and destination. In between you have the transmitter and receiver. This is the crucial part. In any transmitted message there is some kind of distortion that drops that message. Even if it is a little on the other side. Think about that game you played in kindergarten, the telephone game. You whisper something in the ear of the first child, then it goes down the line to the last child. Lets say you say, billy takes a bath. In the end its like, billy fakes a laugh. From the first child to the last child, we have this noise source and the way that the message becomes deteriorated and changes in the act of transmission. Roland shows his interest in this idea about information and how it is corrupted between the source and the destination. This gets into a larger general point that the press photo, it is not straightforward. It is a complex symbiotic object. We can begin to think about the complicated ways it signifies and produces meaning for the reader. Then, this is another important quote from the essay. Can i get a volunteer to read the short quote . The photographic paradox could be seen as the coexistence of two messages, the one with coated mom without a coat. I think it is kind of confusing, but i want to harp on the fact of without a code. Photography is an image without a code. What he means by this is that the image itself is without inherent meaning. In some ways the photograph needs to be coded through captions through the article next to it. There are many other ideas, like the readers political persuasion. The image becomes meaningless until it becomes coded by the surrounding ideas. The image needs its code, the context to understand the meaning. He talks of the paradox of photography and press photography and the ways that you can construct it intentionally and the opinions and political leanings. You can see naturally and pregiven. What does that mean . Thinking back to our photograph right here. We know that there was a person hanging from a tree. Light reflects off that body onto film. We know it was there. That is actual quality. It in some ways makes the constructedmeaning seem natural. And its pregiven. Here is the cuba photograph in reference to earlier when we talked about the spy plane. Here is a different shot taken by a spy plane, same idea cuban lag escape with identifying missiles. So what might he say about the publication in this newspaper. . It has the captions on it so gives more meaning to the photograph, it can make it more scary for seeing it without the meaning. It identifies what is in here. Anyone else . Kind of like adding to that gives context to what were supposed to look for and like the photo on the left. You can sort of tell what is going on. But in the context of a newspaper article, he get more indepth of what we are supposed to be looking for and why it is such a big deal. More background on why people should be afraid of this photograph. Good. Going off of that, more so what they want you to look for. I know we talked about how the text can unload this cultural and political ideas onto the photograph that isnt there when you foresee it. It is that propaganda corruption, what you want to get out of it. Great. That is exactly right. Great points. It says very little to the reader, but the captions that are internally here, the article over here, the political persuasion of the reader, and the scientific quality of this photograph. It looks like a document. It looks like evidence. All these aspects lead us to think about the photograph and its meaning. We read it as truth and fact. But it is a very ambiguous image. Of course there were missiles in cuba, but to the untrained eye of the american public, it tells you very little. If you are trained in interpreting aerial photographs, you could see something. But americans could not communicate these ideas of missiles and so on. I want to talk about beyond Roland Barthes. Images as are published in newspapers. The material print production of these photographs also leaves them to be even more ambiguous. Two reasons. The halftone. Remember the halftone process we discussed many weeks ago, around the turn of the 20th century, how photographs could be converted and could be mass printed by newspapers. The mass publication of photographs. Major watershed moment. The second that they talk about which was new to us is the wire photo. The wire photo basically allows photographs to be transmitted via a radio wire. And so, im going to reproduce this caption a bit larger. It says missile cited in cuba. This is a copy of a photo made public by the u. S. Embassy in london and radio to the u. S. They first got access to this image, is a long story, but this is the first photograph that emerge so they had to wire it from london to new york to print it quickly in the next days paper. They had a new process for this. Just

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