Abstract

The primary focus of the dissertation project is the analysis of (gendered) production processes of photo albums and in the question of how leisure time is negotiated in them. The examined time period is limited to the 1920s and early 1930s in Austria, a time period in which, due to cheaper cameras and rolls of film and clubs’ and societies’ regaining importance after the First World War, more and more demographics could participate in the constitution of visual cultures. With regard to leisure time as well—work was mostly disregarded in private photographs—central changes can be located in the interwar period, most importantly the introduction of the eight-hour work day, work-free Saturdays and legally anchored entitlement to holidays. Employed workers, a group which steadily grew in the interwar period and was broadly differentiated regarding economic and academic backgrounds, could participate especially actively in the developing leisure cultures. Simultaneously, masculine connotations of leisure time became increasingly fragile, especially through the increased presence of young women. 

In the context of this project, visual cultures in the Austrian interwar period will be analyzed from a micro-historical perspective. Through a qualitative survey of private photo albums, a differentiated view of visual cultures as a negotiation between various actors with differing spheres of influence is made possible. The analysis of private photographs and the compilation of photo albums as acts of meaning production enables inquiries regarding receptions of contemporary socio-cultural or political discourses and the question of how broadly based visual regimes come across to particular individuals and how these individuals work with these regimes in their own visual narrations. This line of inquiry enables not only the examination of actors’ agency but also the comprehension of how societal discourses, hierarchies and regimes are inscribed upon self-images, embodied in pictures and narratively processed in picture composition and thereby deploy their full efficacy. 

 

Affiliation: Elisabeth List Fellowship Program Junior Fellow, Department of History, Section for Cultural- and Gender History 

 

Supervision: Univ.-Prof.in Mag.a Dr.in Heidrun Zettelbauer