ABSTRACT
This book has interrogated individual photographs and modes of photography, integrating them into a discussion of key discourses and topics of public debate about reconstruction in Britain, France and West Germany to examine the role of the medium in the postwar moment. Urban memory and imagined futures were governing concepts of both the media spaces in which urban photography circulated and the urban spaces that photography helped shape in the first postwar years. In addition to the themes and case studies tackled, there is a wealth of parallel and interrelated visual histories of postwar reconstruction across Europe and beyond which demand attention that has not been possible. As a pivotal moment in contemporary European history, postwar reconstruction demands a broad range of visual histories. Joel Meyerowitz photographed New York’s Ground Zero during the months of the site’s clearance after the terrorist attack of 11 September 2001.
