BilderMACHT

Images possess an active or generative power and serve as a weapon in political and military conflicts. Gerhard Paul examines their changing significance and their often-claimed power through selected individual images, image subjects, and image strategies across various media such as posters, photography, film, and the internet. The richly illustrated chapters address media icons such as the Mao portrait and the photograph of the "Napalm Girl," the image of "Big Brother" as a central cipher of both totalitarian and post-totalitarian eras, the visual records of the Jewish pogrom in Lviv in 1941, and the image terror in the US prison of Abu Ghraib. The exemplary analyses explore how these images engage with their viewers and simultaneously shape their perspectives or, diachronically, their understanding of history.