University of Basel

VIF | Visualizing Family, Gender Relations and the Body. The Balkans approx. 1860-1950

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

Approximately 2,500 historical images, including photographs and postcards, were collected in the framework of the project ‘Visualizing Family, Gender Relations and the Body. The Balkans approx. 1860-1950’ funded by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF, 2010–2014, project number P 22104-G18) and conducted by Prof. Karl Kaser, Barbara Derler, Ana Đorđević and Prof. Anelia Kassabova. The originals remain with the partner institutions and collectors in Austria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria and Serbia.

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, enabling the diachronic exploration of genres and motifs over longer periods of time.

Due to time and budget constraints, carefully selected photographers were chosen to represent Serbian and Bulgarian studio photography, while others were deliberately omitted. In the case of Bosnia and Herzegovina, it was more difficult to identify representative names, so that here the selection features photographs and postcards by various photographers.

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