University of Basel

Visual Archive Southeastern Europe

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Visual Archive Southeastern Europe

The main objective of the Visual Archive Southeastern Europe (VASE) is to assemble historical and contemporary visual materials from this region of Europe. VASE seeks to draw attention to the image as a primary source, to promote visual studies as a technique and method and thereby to enrich predominantly text-based historical-anthropological research. By providing access to different types of images – e.g. photographs and postcards – VASE aims to enhance reflection on (self-)images of Southeastern Europe, both within the academic community as well as in society in general. The database may not be used for commercial purposes.

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Visualizing Family, Gender Relations and the Body. The Balkans approx. 1860–1950.

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The collection addresses (self-)representations of families and reflects on gender and generational hierarchies and the body in private and public photography and on postcards. It offers information on the origins and context of the production of these images, their utilization as well as the historical and socio-cultural conditions of their reception.

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A Visual Approach to Explore Everyday Life in Turkish and Yugoslav Cities, 1920s and 1930s.

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Sarajevo Istanbul Belgrade Ankara – all four cities shared a common past under the Ottoman Empire, and all underwent a period of accelerated modernization and urbanization in the decades before and after World War I when they were incorporated into the new Republic of Turkey and the Kingdom of Yugoslavia respectively.

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Balkan Cinema

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The Balkan Cinema collection is the result of research undertaken by Karl Kaser to collect visual material for his monograph ‘Hollywood in the Balkans’. Since he collected more material than he could use for the book, the idea emerged to establish the BACI collection for VASE. BACI comprises posters, commercial material, portraits of film directors, shots of cinemas and studios as well as film stills from c. 1900-1970.

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Postcarding Lower Styria. Nation, language, and identities on Picture Postcards 1885-1920

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POLOS displays postcards from around 1890 – 1920 from the Spodnja Štajerska / Untersteiermark / Lower Styria region in modern-day Slovenia. Up until 1918, this region was a part of the Habsburg Monarchy, and was inhabited by speakers of both German and Slovene. The postcards provide interesting insights into early forms of visualization of the region, the realities of everyday life and language use, of both peaceful coexistence and conflicts in a multilingual society.

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