Picturing Genocide in the Independent State of Croatia examines a hitherto neglected aspect of Yugoslav history and visual culture, namely, the role which atrocity photographs played, and continue to play, in shaping the public memory of the Second World. Focusing on visual representations of one of the most controversial and politically divisive episodes of the war — genocidal violence perpetrated against Serbs, Jews, and Roma by the pro-Nazi Ustasha regime in the Independent State of Croatia (1941-1945) — the book examines the origins, history and legacy of violent images.

The book pays special attention to the politics of the atrocity photograph. It explores how images were strategically and selectively mobilized at different times, and by different memory communities and stakeholders, to do different things: justify retribution against political opponents in the immediate aftermath of the war, sustain the discourses of national unity on which socialist Yugoslavia was founded, or, in the post-communist era, prop-up different nationalist agendas, and ‘frame’ the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s.

In exploring this hitherto neglected aspect of Yugoslav history and visual culture, Jovan Byford sheds important light on the intricate nexus of political, cultural and psychological factors which account for the enduring power of atrocity images to shape the collective memory of mass violence.

Participants:

• Olga Manojlović Pintar, Institute for Recent History of Serbia
• Gavro Burazor, historian
• Dragana Stojanović, Faculty of Media and Communications
• Milovan Pisarri, Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory

Moderator: Marija Velinov, Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory

Jovan Byford is a professor of psychology and history at the Open University in Great Britain. His research focuses on interdisciplinary studies of social and psychological aspects of shared beliefs and collective memory, and the relationship between psychology and history in general. He is the author of books and articles on conspiracy theories, anti-Semitism and the memory of the Holocaust.

The event will be photographed and recorded due to publishing on social networks, the website and other information channels for the purpose of promoting the event and activities of the Institute.