Law, Visual Culture, and the Show Trial

This book explores the importance of photography in Central, East, and Southeast European show trials during communist rule. It analyzes how legal propaganda conveyed the message of the law to audiences, and how this use of the visual was exported from the Soviet Union to its satellite states. It challenges traditional accounts of the relationship between law and the visual and offers the possibility of reclaiming and rewriting past accounts. The power of images can be subversive, and the cases addressed contribute to the discourse on visual epistemology and contemporary questions about law and its performativity.

Format: Hardback
Length: 186 pages
Publication date: 13 July 2023
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd

Addressing the intricate relationship between law and the visual, this comprehensive book delves into the profound significance of photography in Central, East, and Southeast European show trials. During the communist era, the dispensation of justice in Albania, East Germany, and Poland relied heavily on legal propaganda, making the visual an indispensable component of the legitimacy of the law. By analyzing photographs of these trials, this book explores how this message was conveyed to audiences both watching and participating in the spectacle of show trials. The book traces the export of this visual propaganda from the Soviet Union to its satellite states in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War, highlighting how legal actors and political authorities embraced new photographic technologies to advance their legal propaganda and legal photography.

Drawing on contemporary theoretical work in the field, the book critically engages entrenched legal historical narratives, in relation to three distinct protagonists, to offer the possibility of reclaiming and rewriting past accounts. As its analysis demonstrates, the power of images can also be subversive; and, as such, the cases it addresses contribute to the discourse on visual epistemology and open onto contemporary questions about law and its inherent performativity.

This original and insightful engagement with the relationship between law and the visual will appeal to legal and cultural theorists, as well as those with more specific interests in Stalinism, and in Central, East, and Southeast European history.

Weight: 530g
Dimension: 234 x 156 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780367429607