Beyond the collapse of language? Photographs of children in postwar Europe as performances and relational objects
This paper explores photographs of children, taken after 1945 by the
Swiss photographer Werner Bischof (1916–1954), as visual objects
and social agents. In the summer of 1945, Bischof embarked on his
first journey through war-ravaged Western Europe – specifically
Germany, France, Belgium, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands – to
visually capture the lives of men, women, and children who had
experienced the destruction, cruelties and trauma of World War II.
Bischof’s photographic mission focused on children in particular. His