The lubok--a broadside or poster--played an important role in Russia's cultural history. Evolving as a medium for communication with a largely illiterate population, the popular prints were adapted to express political propaganda. Stephen Norris examines the use of such prints to stir patriotic fervor during times of war, from Napoleon's failed attempt at conquering Russia to Hitler's invasion. Norris shows how visual images of patriotism and expressions of the Russian spirit changed over time, yet remained similar. The lubok produced during Russia's modern wars consistently featured the same key elements: the Russian peasant, the Cossack, and a representation of "the Russian spirit." When Russia was victorious, occasionally the tsar figured into the imagery; but by the beginning of the 20th century, ethnic identity had replaced dynastic representations of Russian nationhood. After the Revolutions of 1917, Bolshevik and Soviet leaders appropriated the traditional elements of the wartime lubok to promote their vision of the new socialist state. The political power of lubok imagery did not end with the Bolsheviks' adaptations. During World War II, political posters similar to those of the tsarist era reemerged to express and to reinforce Russia's culture of patriotism and strength. Amply illustrated, A War of Images is the first comprehensive study of how popular prints helped to construct national identity in Russia over a period of more than a century. Readers interested in Russian art, history, and culture will find its insights intriguing.

Contains primary source material.

The phrase 'War on Terror' has quietly been retired from official usage, but it persists in the American psyche, and our understanding of it is hardly complete. Exploring the role of verbal and visual images in the War on Terror, the author finds a conflict whose shaky metaphoric and imaginary conception has created its own reality.

DIVExplores Mexico and its romance with the image as well as othe issues of Spanish colonialism./div

Bestselling author David Shields analyzed over a decade's worth of front-page war photographs fromTheNew York Timesand came to a shocking conclusion: the photo-editing process ofthe "paper of record,"by way of pretty, heroic, and lavishly aesthetic image selection, pullsthe woolover the eyes of its readers; Shields forces us to face not only the the media's complicity in dubious and catastrophic military campaigns but our own as well.This powerful media mouthpiece, the mightyTimes, far from being a check on governmental power, is in reality a massive amplifier for its dark forces by virtue of the way it aestheticizeswarfare. Anyone baffled by the willful American involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan can't help but see in this book how eagerly and invariably theTimesled the way in making the case for these wars through the manipulation of its visuals. Shields forces the reader to weigh the consequences of our own passivity in the face of these images' opiatic numbing. The photographs gathered inWar Is Beautiful, often beautiful and always artful, are filters of reality rather than the documentary journalism they purport to be.

In the post 9/11 world, the emotionally charged concepts of identity and ideology, enmity and political violence have once again become household words. Contrary to the serene assumptions of the early 1990s, history did not end. Civilisations are busy clashing against one another, and the self-proclaimed pacified humanity is once again showing its barbaric roots. Religion mixes with politics to produce governments that abuse even their own citizens, and victorious insurgents too often fail to carry out the promised reforms. Terrorists blow up unsuspecting pedestrians, and allegedly democratic nations threaten to bomb allegedly less democratic ones back to the Stone Age. Mass demonstrations materialise like flash mobs out of nowhere, prepared to hold their ground until the bitter end. Where does all this passionate intensity come from? To better understand how the ideological enmity of today is moulded, spread and managed, this book investigates the propaganda operations of the past. Its topics range from the ruthless portrayal of female enemy soldiers in an early-20th-century civil war setting to the multiple enemy images cherished by Adolf Hitler, and onwards, to the WWII Soviet Russians as a subtype of a more ancient notion of the Eastern Hordes. Of more recent events, the book covers the Rwandan genocide of 1994 and the still ongoing Israel-Palestine conflict. The closing chapter on cyber warfare introduces the reader to the invisible enemies of the future.

This book is a visual, theoretical and historical resource about the photography of war, and how images are used as instruments of war. It comprises essays and interviews by prominent theorists, artists and photographers and covers the urgent issues of the depiction of war, the use of images of war by the media and the circulation of unofficial images and the impact of the digital mediascape.