Photographs of Child Victims in Propaganda Posters of the Spanish Civil War

Abstract

This article examines propaganda posters from the Spanish Civil War that used photographs of child victims in an attempt to galvanise support for the Republican war effort. Rather than discus the efficacy of these posters as persuasive tools, this analysis focuses on their suitability to support propagandistic narratives of the Civil War, which would form and support ‘usable pasts’ for collectives – understandings of the past that serve a function in the present – such as identity claims, or the basis of demands for justice. In this instance the photographic discourses of these posters supported broader narratives of the Civil War. The use of child subjects afforded narrative flexibility to the photographs employed in these posters, and this was combined with the supposed veracity of the photographic medium, and the ingrained norms of familial photography – that taken of and by family members – to construct narratives with propagandistic value. Please note: This article contains graphic images of child death.