Remembering September 11: Photography as cultural diplomacy

International Affairs

Volumn 79, Issue 2, 2003, Pages

  Kennedy, Liam ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF BIRMINGHAM   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 0041877146     PISSN: 00205850     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/1468-2346.00310     Document Type: Review

References (33)

1. Remarks by Secretary of State Colin L. Powell at the launch of the Educational and Cultural Affairs Exhibit, "After September 11th: images from Ground Zero"', US Department of State: Office of the Spokesman press release, 27 Feb. 2002.
2. This promotion reflects a broader reinvigoration of public diplomacy in the wake of September 11. Christopher Ross, a special coordinator for public diplomacy and public affairs at the Department of State, has welcomed this: 'Since the September 11 attacks on the United States, the nature and role of public diplomacy have been debated more vigorously than at any time in recent memory. A foreign affairs speciality that was once the province of a relatively small number of professionals has suddenly -and quite properly - taken its place in the wide-ranging discussion of national security in which the US population is currently engaged ... Terrorism has changed the way people think about public diplomacy. Today, no serious observer can deny the link between perceptions of the United States and the country's national security.' Christopher Ross, 'Public diplomacy comes of age', Washington Quarterly 25: 2, 2002, pp. 75, 83.
3. Kevin Mulcahy, 'Cultural diplomacy and the exchange programs: 1938-1978', Journal of Arts Management, Law and Society 2: 1, Spring 1999, p. 26.
4. On the history and activities of the USIA, see: Walter L. Hixson, Parting the curtain: propaganda, culture and the Cold War, 1941-1961 (New York: Macmillan, 1997); Frank Ninkovich, The diplomacy of ideas: US foreign policy and cultural relations, 1938-1950 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1981); Alvin A. Snyder, Warriors of disinformation: American propaganda, Soviet lies, and the winning of the Cold War (New York: Arcade, 1995); Nancy Snow. Propaganda Inc: selling America's culture to the world (New York: Seven Stories Press, 1998).
5. On the history and activities of the USIA, see: Walter L. Hixson, Parting the curtain: propaganda, culture and the Cold War, 1941-1961 (New York: Macmillan, 1997); Frank Ninkovich, The diplomacy of ideas: US foreign policy and cultural relations, 1938-1950 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1981); Alvin A. Snyder, Warriors of disinformation: American propaganda, Soviet lies, and the winning of the Cold War (New York: Arcade, 1995); Nancy Snow. Propaganda Inc: selling America's culture to the world (New York: Seven Stories Press, 1998).
6. On the history and activities of the USIA, see: Walter L. Hixson, Parting the curtain: propaganda, culture and the Cold War, 1941-1961 (New York: Macmillan, 1997); Frank Ninkovich, The diplomacy of ideas: US foreign policy and cultural relations, 1938-1950 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1981); Alvin A. Snyder, Warriors of disinformation: American propaganda, Soviet lies, and the winning of the Cold War (New York: Arcade, 1995); Nancy Snow. Propaganda Inc: selling America's culture to the world (New York: Seven Stories Press, 1998).
7. On the history and activities of the USIA, see: Walter L. Hixson, Parting the curtain: propaganda, culture and the Cold War, 1941-1961 (New York: Macmillan, 1997); Frank Ninkovich, The diplomacy of ideas: US foreign policy and cultural relations, 1938-1950 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1981); Alvin A. Snyder, Warriors of disinformation: American propaganda, Soviet lies, and the winning of the Cold War (New York: Arcade, 1995); Nancy Snow. Propaganda Inc: selling America's culture to the world (New York: Seven Stories Press, 1998).
8. For an astute critical account of this trend, see Snow, Propaganda, Inc.
9. 'Under Secretary of State Beers salutes visitors council', 14 March 2002, US Department of State: International Information Programs, http://usinfo.state.gov/usa/volunteer/s041502.htm.
10. Chris Reidy, 'Hearts and minds: Madison Avenue guru aims to discredit Bin Laden'. Boston Globe, 8 Nov. 2001, p. C1.
11. 'Under Secretary of State Beers salutes visitors council'.
12. I b i d.
13. 'Travelling September 11 photo exhibition unveiled in Washington', 27 Feb. 2002, US Department of State: International Information Programs, http://usinfo.state.gov/topical/pol/terror/02022802.htm.
14. 'After September 11: images from Ground Zero', 6 March 2002, http://www.911exhibit.state.gov/index.cfm.
15. Joseph Kahn, 'Afterimages: Joel Meyerowitz's photos find beauty beneath the horror of September 11', Boston Globe, 24 Oct. 2001, p. C1.
16. Joel Meyrrowitz and Colin Westerbeck, Joel Meyerowitz (London: Phaidon, 2001), p. 96.
17. Vince Aletti, 'Site specific: with Joel Meyerowitz in the forbidden city', Village Voice, 2 Nov. 2001, p. 13.
18. Hamilton Kahn, 'Archival instinct draws Meyerowitz to "Ground Zero"', Provincetown Banner, 4 Oct. 2001, p. 5.
19. J. Kahn, 'Afterimages', p. C1.
20. I b i d.
21. Not surprisingly, much of this questioning has emerged from studies of Holocaust photography. See e.g. Andrea Liss, Trespassing through shadows: memory, photography and the Holocaust (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1998); and Barbie Zelizer, Remembering to forget: Holocaust memory through the camera's eye (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998).
22. Not surprisingly, much of this questioning has emerged from studies of Holocaust photography. See e.g. Andrea Liss, Trespassing through shadows: memory, photography and the Holocaust (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1998); and Barbie Zelizer, Remembering to forget: Holocaust memory through the camera's eye (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998).
23. H. Kahn, 'Archival instinct', p. 5; Aletti, 'Site specific', p. 13.
24. H. Kahn, 'Archival instinct', p. 5; Aletti, 'Site specific', p. 13.
25. For a detailed critical history of the exhibition's origins, production and reception, see Eric Sandeen, Picturing an exhibition: The Family of Man and 1950s America (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1995).
26. Wendy Kozal, 'Visions of the world', American Quarterly 50: 3, Sept. 1998, p. 667.
27. 'Under Secretary of State Beers salutes visitors council'.
28. 'Museum of London: capital concerns', 6 March 2002, http://www.Museum-london.org.uk/MOLsite/exhibits/sept11/.
29. 24 Jim Fisher-Thompson, 'Vice-President's wife visits September 11 photo exhibit in London', 3 March 2002, http://www.usembassy.org.uk/terror.
30. Patricia Holland, 'Blow-up in Kenya', New Statesman, 13 May 2002, p. 37.
31. Allan Sekula, in a forceful critique of this ideology, has argued that it combines romantic and technological imperatives in an imperialist project: 'The worldliness of photography is the outcome, not of any immanent universality of meaning, but of a project of global domination. The language of the imperial centers is imposed, both forcefully and seductively, upon the peripheries.' Allan Sekula, 'The traffic in photographs', in Photography against the grain: essays and photo works 1973-1983 (Halifax, Nova Scotia: Nova Scotia College Press, 1984), p. 96.
32. See Ross, 'Public diplomacy comes of age', p. 81.
33. Lamis Andoni, a Middle East analyst, argues that in 'the era of us against them' there is diminished '[r]ecognition of the equality of human suffering'. Lamis Andoni, 'Deeds speak louder than words', Washington Quarterly 25: 2, 2002, pp. 85-6.