Visualizing Conflict: Analyzing Visual Narratives of Photojournalistic Images of Balkan War Refugees

Abstract

As part of a larger research program on media coverage and representation of the conflicts in the Balkans, we examine humanizing visualizations of armed conflict. The study focuses, in particular, on photojournalistic accounts of the humanitarian crisis in Kosovo at the 25th anniversary of the Kosovo war. Drawing, in particular, on Ariella Aïsha Azoulay’s (2008) concept of the civil contract of photography, this study analyses how victims of humanitarian catastrophes are represented and what images communicate in terms of family, gender, international communication, and conflict. We interrogate visual signifiers in conflict and global narrative constructions of refugees fleeing from conflict and how the visual rhetoric of war and conflict aims to elicit affective responses. Finally, the study highlights the work of women photojournalists in Kosovo and the Balkans and the impact of their work twenty-five years onward.