Genre Memory in War Photography and Film

Prof. Robert Burgoyne

"Tim Hetherington was an Academy Award nominee in 2010 for his film Restrepo, a documentary feature film made with the journalist Sebastian Junger. In photography, he is best known for his collection of war photographs from Afghanistan entitled Infidel.

"In this talk, I show how Hetherington's work foregrounds the body of the soldier as a vehicle of emotion, and as catalyst for critical rethinking. Emphasizing the body at risk, his work calls on the genre memory of past war photography and film, reaching back to Edison's "War Actualities" and the Civil War photographs of Alexander Gardner, to introduce a distinct "corpography" of contemporary war. My presentation is a response to Fredric Jameson's controversial assertion that war might in fact be "unrepresentable."

Robert Burgoyne is Chair in Film Studies at the University of St Andrews. His work centers on historical representation and film, with a particular emphasis on questions of memory and emotion in film. Currently, he is working on the representation of war in film and photography. His recent book publications include The Hollywood Historical Film (Wiley Blackwell, 2008); Film Nation: Hollywood Looks at U.S. History: Revised Edition (Minnesota, 2010) and The Epic Film in World Culture (Routledge, 2011).

Schreyvogelsaal, Institut für Theater-, Film und Medienwissenschaft
Hofburg, Batthyanystiege, 1010 Wien

28. Mai 2015, 19:00 - 20:30

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