ABSTRACT
The cultural value of the photobook in shaping public attitudes was recognized during the war by the British Ministry of Information, which produced official campaign accounts such as Bomber Command and Roof over Britain. Yet, while similar efforts to photographically document the historic built environment and disseminate this imagery existed in all three prewar nations, postwar publications addressing architecture as heritage in France and Britain demonstrate, as in occupied Germany, a number of particular presentist concerns precipitated by specific postwar situation. Well into the postwar period, Roubier was producing books documenting the architecture of Europe, but the publication of the series 'L'Art francais dans la guerre' exhibits particular concern with regional architectural heritage and national identity. The ruination of the air war in general, and Dresden in particular, thus had a significant position in cultural landscape of the newly established GDR, as the architecture of reconstruction was to have on both sides of the Cold War divide in subsequent years.
