Papers by Camille Rouquet
Interfaces, 2019
This is a foray into The Vietnam War, the documentary series directed by Ken Burns and Lynn Novic... more This is a foray into The Vietnam War, the documentary series directed by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick and released by PBS in September 2017. Through this new historical retelling, the directors aim at reconciling the nation with its painful history. New documents are revealed and old documents are reconsidered. The role of the media during the war, which has been subjected to much historiographical debate, is viewed from a different angle. Iconic photographs used to be deemed influential and have deeply impacted the social memory of the war. They are now reinserted into history to contribute to a new educational approach. This is a new stage in the general historiography of the war in Vietnam.
Leaves, 2019
The photojournalistic icons of the Vietnam War result from a cultural construction and a process ... more The photojournalistic icons of the Vietnam War result from a cultural construction and a process of iconization that took place over several decades. With every reprint and remediation, these pictures lost some of their historical context and came to be read as purely symbolic images. Their meaning has been simplified over time to bend them to a media discourse focused on the writing of history. This article presents a detailed examination of the reprints of these images in the American press since the end of the war and shows how they came to be chosen as representatives of the war but also of the work of photojournalists. Iconic photographs are now used as illustrations of the notion of media influence and represent its most popular incarnation.
Some sensational and violent press photographs have become considered as iconic, in the same sens... more Some sensational and violent press photographs have become considered as iconic, in the same sense as artists, movie stars or objects of popular culture, because they have become truly famous and do not require an expert understanding of photography transcending specialized knowledge. This paper explores the processes through which a handful of photographs have acquired this status by focusing on the period of the Vietnam war, during which, it is believed, these photographs became tools of contestation in the media and for social protest movements.
Organised by François Brunet (UPD/LARCA), Catherine Bernard (UPD/LARCA), Marc Vernet (UPD/CERILAC... more Organised by François Brunet (UPD/LARCA), Catherine Bernard (UPD/LARCA), Marc Vernet (UPD/CERILAC) and André Gunthert (EHESS/LHIVIC), this three-day conference was dedicated to the following issues: the archaeology of visual studies in the Anglophone world, the translatability of visual studies into the French and European fields, and the relationship of visual studies to history and its methods. This symposium was an opportunity to try and assess the position of visual studies in France, where they are but recent fields of interests, contrary to the United States, Britain and Germany where they have been studied for a few decades.1 The objective of this symposium was to ask the following question: can visual studies find a place in French research fields, and if not, why?
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Papers by Camille Rouquet