Suchergebnisse

This book draws on a rich set of materials to examine postwar experiences of ex-servicemen who were facially-disfigured during the First World War. Weaving together medical, institutional, amateur and family photographic albums under a social history framework, Jason Bate underscores overlooked aspects of these men's continued hardships after returning home from the front. In particular, a focus is on the private sphere of the family and the complicated world of employment that disfigured veterans navigated on their return. Little attention has hitherto been paid to the aftercare of disfigured veterans once discharged from the army, or the long-term impact on individuals, and the sense of burden felt by families and local communities. In addressing this neglected area, the chapters here illuminate different practices of photography by doctors, nurses, press agencies, and families across the generations to challenge our perceptions of the personal traumas of soldiers and civilians

Abstract
This article critically interrogates the nature of facial wounds themselves, their visceral, dehumanising quality, visibility, and social meaning. Little attention has been paid to the cultural ramifications and difficult questions concerning the futures of facially injured soldiers that Britain had to address in the post-war era. Focusing on photograph albums as socially salient objects, this article challenges medical photographic archives. Building on unexplored family archives, it revises understandings of the difficulties of veterans' homecoming, and how they achieved a level of emotional recovery as they tried to find a place in the post-war social fabric. The article argues that family photographic collections show the less obvious way that the war lived on for veterans and families, its damage and how it was passed on. These private collections offer new revelations on the success or failure of the surgical interventions in their aesthetic aims.