This thesis examines the relationship between the photographic archive of the First World War
and Canadian war memory through an analysis of the production of photographs depicting the
ruins of Ypres, Belgium and their postwar appropriation. Taken by official photographers in the
employment of the Canadian War Records Office, the photographs were intended to act as both
historical documents and, paradoxically, as publicity and propaganda images. Both functions of
the photographs work to construct a unified image of the war and are similarly characterized by a
repressive structure. Ypres, almost entirely destroyed during the war, was both the site of
Canada's first battle and major victory as well as a contentious site connoting military
mismanagement and wasteful loss of life. Resultantly, representations of the city's ruins are
suggestive of a corresponding shift from a mythic to a horrific war in First World War
historiography that took place in the decades proceeding it. Images of Ypres' ruins were filtered
through both material censorship enforced by the military to elicit high morale and psychic
censorship. Photographers made mechanized war conform to their visual expectations.
However, the repressive structure literally contains that which it represses as an uncanny double
and invariably allows for the possibility of its return. I argue that the anodyne and
conventionalized image generated by official photographs of ruins also contains and signifies the
destructive violence of modern warfare. Finally, I examine the construction of these conflicting
narratives as they develop around the simultaneous processes of archivization and circulation
ever-widening circles of mnemonic constructs such as postcards and tourist brochures at the
same time that they were being archived. I argue that rather than contaminating and damaging
the archival meaning of the photographs, the archive is an accumulative institution capable of
incorporating a variety of conflicting narratives without ruining its authority.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:BVAU.2429/14446 |
| Date | 11 1900 |
| Creators | Alexandre, David |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Relation | UBC Retrospective Theses Digitization Project [http://www.library.ubc.ca/archives/retro_theses/] |
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