The ‘Érdekes Ujság Battlefield Photo Album’: A Hungarian Newspaper’s Amateur Photography Contest at the Beginning of World War One
Abstract
World War One was the first-time large numbers of soldiers could photograph their own wartime experiences. Soldiers shared their photographs with a variety of audiences including comrades, family, and the public back home. This poster focuses on a series of amateur photography contests organized by the Hungarian illustrated newspaper, Az Érdekes Ujság (The Interesting Newspaper, AÉU) at the beginning of the First World War. Starting in December 1914, the editors of AÉU encouraged soldiers to send in pictures from the front. The paper featured the soldiers' photographs in every issue, organized a panel of judges, and awarded cash prizes to the winning entries. These photographs were also collected into an album titled, 'Az érdekes újság háborús albuma' (The Interesting Newspaper's Battlefield Photo Album) and sold to the public during and after the war.
The soldiers' photographs circulated widely both at the front and beyond the battlefield thanks to illustrated newspapers, collectors' albums, and the public's desire for news about family members and their experiences of the war. The creation and circulation of these images was constrained by a variety of factors including: military censorship, contemporary aesthetics, and public expectations about the purpose and meaning of visual representations of soldiers on the battlefield.
This poster analyzes examples of how Hungarian war photographers used nineteenth century aesthetic categories, like the Picturesque and the Genre Picture, to make sense of their experience of total war. The pictures submitted by the soldiers and published in AEU tended to recapitulate old established genres of pre-war, nineteenth century photography. Several factors account for the aesthetic continuity between pre-war and wartime images in the AEU photo contest. First, the choices of photographers and the editors were constrained by censorship and the broadly shared goal of representing the Imperial and Royal Armies in a positive light. The sociologist Pierre Bourdieu has argued that the limits in photography are not set by technology, but by what society designates as the photographable. Hungarian audiences also expected wartime images to reflect established aesthetic categories and subjects. Second, throughout the nineteenth century, and up through World War One, photography remained a technical pursuit. Commercial photographers and accomplished amateurs had to master the same skills and technical knowledge. Ultimately, they also shared the same aesthetic vocabulary. Finally, the jury that evaluated the contestants was composed of the editor, the publisher as well as several noted photographers and an art school professor. For professional reasons the jury members had similar ideas about what constituted a 'pretty picture.' These factors resulted in a photo album that used nineteenth century aesthetics to represent total war at the start of the twentieth century.
College
College of Liberal Arts
Department
History
Campus
Winona
Start Date
4-19-2023 12:00 PM
End Date
4-19-2023 12:19 PM
Presentation Type
Oral Presentation
Format of Presentation or Performance
In-Person
The ‘Érdekes Ujság Battlefield Photo Album’: A Hungarian Newspaper’s Amateur Photography Contest at the Beginning of World War One
World War One was the first-time large numbers of soldiers could photograph their own wartime experiences. Soldiers shared their photographs with a variety of audiences including comrades, family, and the public back home. This poster focuses on a series of amateur photography contests organized by the Hungarian illustrated newspaper, Az Érdekes Ujság (The Interesting Newspaper, AÉU) at the beginning of the First World War. Starting in December 1914, the editors of AÉU encouraged soldiers to send in pictures from the front. The paper featured the soldiers' photographs in every issue, organized a panel of judges, and awarded cash prizes to the winning entries. These photographs were also collected into an album titled, 'Az érdekes újság háborús albuma' (The Interesting Newspaper's Battlefield Photo Album) and sold to the public during and after the war.
The soldiers' photographs circulated widely both at the front and beyond the battlefield thanks to illustrated newspapers, collectors' albums, and the public's desire for news about family members and their experiences of the war. The creation and circulation of these images was constrained by a variety of factors including: military censorship, contemporary aesthetics, and public expectations about the purpose and meaning of visual representations of soldiers on the battlefield.
This poster analyzes examples of how Hungarian war photographers used nineteenth century aesthetic categories, like the Picturesque and the Genre Picture, to make sense of their experience of total war. The pictures submitted by the soldiers and published in AEU tended to recapitulate old established genres of pre-war, nineteenth century photography. Several factors account for the aesthetic continuity between pre-war and wartime images in the AEU photo contest. First, the choices of photographers and the editors were constrained by censorship and the broadly shared goal of representing the Imperial and Royal Armies in a positive light. The sociologist Pierre Bourdieu has argued that the limits in photography are not set by technology, but by what society designates as the photographable. Hungarian audiences also expected wartime images to reflect established aesthetic categories and subjects. Second, throughout the nineteenth century, and up through World War One, photography remained a technical pursuit. Commercial photographers and accomplished amateurs had to master the same skills and technical knowledge. Ultimately, they also shared the same aesthetic vocabulary. Finally, the jury that evaluated the contestants was composed of the editor, the publisher as well as several noted photographers and an art school professor. For professional reasons the jury members had similar ideas about what constituted a 'pretty picture.' These factors resulted in a photo album that used nineteenth century aesthetics to represent total war at the start of the twentieth century.
