History through the Viewfinder. Press Photography in Austria 1945 - 1955.

Our research communication project aims at promoting the results of the FWF funded project `War of Pictures`. Press Photography in Austria 1945-1955 to the general public and especially to teachers and pupils. The project currently conducted at the Department of Communication started in February 2014. Its central objective is biographical research on Austrian press photographers who were active during the postwar period (1945-55). A further focus is the so far very first analysis of the picture services of the four occupational powers that used press photos to practice opposing image politics. In the course of the research project, the pictorial material of Austria`s five leading illustrated magazines will be critically examined in order to describe the pictorial propaganda of the Cold War in Austria. The research project `War of Pictures`. Press Photography in Austria 1945-1955 links history, politics and the media and deals with a time in the recent past which can still be remembered by an older and even younger generation on account of the stories told by relatives. Therefore it can be assumed that a wide public will be interested in the forthcoming research results. Additionally the visual focus of this project combined with Oral History interviews is a favorable prerequisite for multi-media based communication of this project to a diverse target group. The implementation of the research communication project will be conducted in several steps and on different levels by including and addressing different target groups. The core of this project lies in the conceptualization and realization of the online exhibition History through the Viewfinder: Press Photography in Austria 1945-1955. The team of the current FWF project will be responsible for the content including writing the accompanying texts for the exhibit. Additionally, students from the Department of Communication will produce podcasts with contemporary witnesses for the online- exhibition. These podcasts will be created during a seminar on Scientific Outreach of the Wissenstransferzentrum OST. Further, the students will, with the support of the project team, create Wikipedia entries of selected press photographers and topical entries dealing with post-war media history. Last but not least we plan a travelling exhibit with 10 transportable display stands. Our most important target groups are teachers and pupils ages eleven to nineteen, for whom workshops and other outreach activities will be developed in cooperation with the Department for Didactics of History, Social Studies and Civic Education. The workshops will be based on the information provided in the online and travelling exhibitions. The project team, students of the Department of Communication, the external partners as well as the target groups will be actively involved in all stages of this project.

From September 2016 till December 2017 the department of communication at the University of Vienna conducted an interdisciplinary science communication project (staff: Dr. Marion Krammer, Dr. Margarethe Szeless, Caroline Schenk Bakk, Karin Berger Bakk and Dr. Tobias Reckling of DLE Forschungsservice und Nachwuchsförderung of the University of Vienna) under the direction Prof. Fritz Hausjell. Building on the findings of another FWF-sponsored research project examining press photography in post-war Austria, during this project the online-exhibition War of Pictures. Visual culture in Austria 1945-1955 was created and related workshops were held in Viennese schools. The concept of the online-exhibition was developed by the scientific staff of the FWF- sponsored reserach project War of Pictures. Austrian Press Photography 1945-1955. Together with the Fachdidaktikzentrum Geschichte, Sozialkunde und Politische Bildung (staff: Prof. Alois Ecker, Mag Hanna-Maria Schuschnig, Mag. Janine Mittelmayer) didactic material for highschool pupils and teaching manuals were designed. The didactic material and a questionnaire were incorporated into the online exhibition. In cooperation with the Austrian Center for Digital Humanities a well-designed and user-friendly online-exhibiton was created. Furthermore seven workshops were successfully held in Viennese highschools in November and December 2017 making use of the online-exhibition and the related didactic material. Last but not least, Hanna-Maria Schuschnig from the Fachdidaktikzentrum Geschichte, Sozialkunde und Politische Bildung is currently preparing a topics dossier Östereichbild Bilder aus Österreich (Image of Austria Images from Austria). In the online-exhibition War of Pictures. Bildkultur in Österreich 1945-1955 (http://warofpictures.univie.ac.at) history literally comes alive through the viewfinder of contemporary press photographers. However, the exhibition also looks critically at the presentation of photography in the visual media. Pupils shall thus gain media literacy. Furthermore the online-exhibition makes the latest research on Austrian post-war visual culture known to a broad public.