Fotografii de familie din perioada Primului Război Mondial, în județul Mureș. Din arhiva digitală a Secției de Etnografie a Muzeului Județean Mureș
Family Photos from World War I in Mureș County. From the Digital Archive of the Ethnographic and Folk Department of the Mureș County Museum

Summary/Abstract: The family photographs from the World War I are important sources both for local history, ethnography and visual anthropology, illustrating especially the everyday life behind the front as well as on the front line.For historians, these kinds of sources allow the access to a lesser known historical reality, the life of history anonymous. For visual anthropology, the family photo from the war is research object for the habits related to photography, of how to use of photography as a symbol of the affective ties between those on the front and those from home. For ethnographers, the family photos from the World War I are research tools and first-rate documents to study the way of life of the people in a period of crisis.The family photos from the World War I can be grouped in 5 categories, after the subject and their use:I. Photos of soldiers, before going to the front (Pl. I/1-2);II. Photos of soldiers, on the front, sent home (Pl. I/3-4, II/1-2);III. Photos with family, sent on the front (Pl. II/3-4, III/1-2); IV. Photos with soldiers on leave, with family and friends (Pl. III/3-4, IV/1-3);V. Moments of everyday life behind the fronts (Pl. IV/4, V/1-3, VI/1-2, VII).Family photos, during the World War I, in the Mureş County area, do not talk about the realities of the war, but about people, about the affective connections between them.The photos with soldiers before they go to the front, a picture of their loved ones or a picture with their family at home, they take with them as a talisman, as a substitute for the person that missed them, a person that can die there. Likewise, the soldiers are photographed with the whole family left at home and sent to the one left for war to relieve their homesickness. Some people even shoot at the return of the war with the family as a kind of symbolic reunion at the photographer.The role of these family photographs during the war is not a memorial, even if they are called souvenirs, but they must keep their vision and affection with their relatives, their home and with the normal everyday life.This kind of private war photos are important sources, but usually ignored, a sources for the history of the unknown people, “the history of the country through the little ones”, as Nicolae Iorga, a great Romanian historian, said that is the true history.A lot of these photos are not only history sources for the war, but also important visual documents for the local peasants costume, the differences, the influences and the changes that appears in the way of life.Through these pictures with the family, they try to achieve a lost family solidarity, a normal life, beyond the hardships and horrors of the war.

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