Captured Moments: The Role of the Image Throughout the Spanish Civil War / Momentos capturados: El rol de la imagen a través de la Guerra Civil Española

Abstract

Throughout the Spanish Civil War, 1936-1939, interestingly, the coverage of this civil war was dispersed internationally, allowing foreign opinions and perspectives to infiltrate a conflict localized to Spain — this dispersal being a novel phenomena for its time. Amidst the physical combat and ideological conflict, one characteristic made this war unique — it was highly visual. Images maintain a unique rhetorical power to inform, influence, question. The main focus of this investigation lies in analyzing this power, how it was used and how it affected the public, in order to determine what narratives were formed, for whom, and how they were interpreted. These lines of inquiry are aimed at understanding how different image mediums — posters, photographs, fine arts and films — were received and interpreted by the general public, and how this reception and interpretation affected the public’s perception of the Spanish Civil War.