Cold War Camera

“This bold reframing of the understandings of the Cold War through questions of visuality and photography transcends the conventional Soviet--USA geopolitical axis by accounting for global South dynamics beyond the limited nomenclature of subsidiary proxy wars. This timely book breaks scholarship on photography out of the problematic Euro-American orientation, and it will undoubtedly spark considerable debate.” - Patricia Hayes, coeditor of Ambivalent: Photography and Visibility in African History

“A sparkling and expertly sculpted set of essays that brings a neglected period and politics into new and vivid focus. Understanding the Cold War as a global conflict (as much North--South as East--West) the volume lays out an authoritative new cultural cartography showing how power and visibility were distributed. Providing a valuable optic on past history, it also now serves as a lens on a rapidly darkening future.” - Christopher Pinney, Professor of Anthropology and Visual Culture, University College London

"Cold War Camera takes readers from South Africa to Ethiopia, Vietnam to Palestine and Iran, from Chile to China, the Arctic Circle, and beyond. Its reach is sweeping, revealing a world entirely, if differentially, impacted as its most powerful quarreled to suture their place at the top. Just as it sheds light on this rich and storied past, Cold War Camera illuminates the present, proving that the tension and violence associated with the 'official' Cold War-era never ceased but only took on different forms." - Liz Hallgren, International Journal of Communication

"Cold War Camera more than makes the case for photography’s significance as a site of Cold War contestation and modality for reckoning with its violences, including at the most intimate of scales. . . . It is in the contributions of the book as a collective endeavor, exemplified by the collaboratively written introduction and essays, that the promises of a critically global approach to Cold War structures of seeing emerge most powerfully, as vital for tracing the operations and ramifications of a set of knowledge projects premised, at least in part, on their obfuscation." - Nadine Attewell, The Communication Review

"Cold War Camera brings together some exceptional photography writers in a collection exploring an astonishing range of source images. . . ." - Georgia Vesma, History of Photography

"Cold War Camera offers visual studies scholars a collection of case studies examining how photography was used to shape, and respond to, the political landscape of the Cold War era. . . . [it] successfully fills a gap in the literature stemming from academic tendencies to focus primarily on conflicts between the Soviet Union and the United States, as all of the book’s chapters demonstrate how aggressions arising from ideological conflicts between the US and USSR generated ripple effects in photography and cultural politics throughout the globe." - Anke Therese Schulz, Visual Studies

"In its breadth and coverage of the politics of photography in the twentieth century, Cold War Camera is unmatched. . . . [it] represents a new generation of the historiography and critique of political photography." - Delinda Collier, Art Bulletin

"An anthology with a comprehensive geographic scope, Cold War Camera focuses on photography-mediated visual culture and politics in a transnational, interconnected world, struck by proxy wars and ideological warfare. The authors address how photographs have been produced, appropriated, interpreted, circulated, and received, while aligning with, or reacting against, regimes shaped by Cold War geopolitics across countries and continents." - Isotta Poggi, ARLIS/NA

"Cold War Camera is a book about wounds and truths. It shows how a gentle and careful look at the wounds that never heal or those that leave irreparable scars allows one to salvage the truths about the historical geography of violence. The case here is a photographic look at the historical geography of the global Cold War." - Seçil Binboga, University of Toronto Quarterly

"Containing over one hundred high-quality figures that ground analysis and bring the arguments, quite literally, to light, and printed on glossy thick-stock paper, Cold War Camera is a volume that feels important, the excellent content mirrored by the book’s format itself."
  - Jack A. W. Bowman, H-Socialisms, H-Net Reviews