Images of Propaganda: Emotional Representations of the Italo-Turkish War

Abstract

This paper explores the emotional impact of the Italo-Turkish War (1911-1913) through the visual imagery that mediated its perception in Italy and abroad, depicting the conflict as a glorious mission of civilization and easy land appropriation. It does so by analysing a series of exceptional materials from a rich trove of Harvard Collections – featured in a 2014 exhibit, but never object of a critical study – which ambiguously comply with the propagandistic war narrative, rooted in a problematic entanglement of nationalism, racism and orientalism. Materials include: three stunning photo-albums belonged to Carlo Caneva (Supreme Commander of Italian forces in Libya between 1911 and 1912), Count Pompeo di Campello (a good photographer and officer in the higher echelons of the army) and Angelo Cormanni (a soldier in the 3rd telegraphic unit); commemorative postcards and trading cards. Focussing on how each of these media differently embodies the nationalistic clichés, my aim is to reconstruct how the emotional effects of visual propaganda shaped both direct and indirect encounters with the war, fostering a collective falsification mechanism, all the while unconsciously denouncing the colonialist gaze, hence triggering another kind of emotional response.

Keywords

• italo-turkish war (1911-1913)
• colonial photography
• visual propaganda
• war and emotions