Peace photography is derivative, illustrative, and constitutive of peace: it is dependent on definitions of peace; it exemplifies preexisting understandings of peace; and it shapes and diversifies viewers' understandings of peace beyond established and taken-for-granted ones. Peace photography is a pluralistic concept. Indeed, different forms of peace require different forms of visual representation just as do different positions on a social group's trajectory from war to peace. Conversations about different peace photographsi.e., different photographs that individuals or groups of people regard as depictions of peacehelp understand underlying notions of peace as well as the political and social conditions from which these notions emerge. Given that visual images never operate on observers in isolation, it will be very difficult to establish causality between a given photograph and peace. It is, therefore, more productive to conceive of the relationship between photographs and peace as an episodic relationship. Given the extent to which visual images dominate social life, it is reasonable to assume that nowadays this relationship is stronger than ever before. However, it is largely unexplored in peace research. Visual education should therefore be included in peace research curricula and selected photographs should regularly be designated as peace photographs so as to take the visual turn in the social sciences seriously and to recognize and capitalize on the peace potentialities of visual images.
Peace and Photography
Definitional IssuesReflecting recent trends in image production and dissemination, photography nowadays is a "meta-network of machines, politics, culture, and ways of collective seeing" (Paglen 2011, p. 68). Ways of collective seeing include collective blindness: things we do not see, for a variety of reasons, or things we do see without, however, grasping their meanings and importance. Photographs of peace are a case in point. They are everywhere but seldom registered as such. As a distinct genre in photographic discourses, peace photographyin contrast to war photographydoes not exist and literature on the connection between photography and peace is conspicuous mainly by its absence. Dictionaries of photography include discussion of war photography (Herschdorfer 2018) but have little to say on peace photography. One of the reasons for the invisibility of peace in photography is