Moments That Last: The Political and Social Impact of Images of Crisis and War

What must happen for an image to be widely reproduced, reach an international audience, and generate political and social momentum? What role do political images—from paintings and press photographs to social media posts—play in the wars and crises of the 20th and 21st centuries? Extraordinary works can capture the essence of a historical situation and shape its reception in the media and politics. In this talk, the art historian, political scientist, and journalist Kia Vahland explains how iconic images become symbols of emotional states in which political and personal experiences intertwine.

Kia Vahland is an art historian and editor at the Süddeutsche Zeitung, where she headed the visual arts section until 2017 and co-founded the opinion desk in 2018. She teaches at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. In 2016, she received the Michael Althen Prize for Criticism from the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. Vahland is the author of numerous books on art and history. Her biography Leonardo da Vinci und die Frauen: Eine Künstlerbiographie (Insel Verlag, 2020), published in English as The Da Vinci Women: The Untold Feminist Power of Leonardo’s Art (Black Dog & Leventhal, 2020), was nominated for the Leipzig Book Award. 

IWM Permanent Fellow Ayşe Çağlar will moderate the discussion.