The Cold War of Pictures: Framing Returning Prisoners of War in Austria’s Illustrated Press

This article examines the photographic subject of the return of Austrian prisoners of war in the aftermath of the Second World War. Scholars and curators have singled out what are known as the ‘homecomer’ photographs by the Austrian photographer Ernst Haas, praising their artistic quality and assigning these works an iconic status. This approach has obscured the broader historical background of this subject as well as the editorial practices, collaborative efforts, and propagandistic intentions of these works in the field of photojournalism. In contrast, this article focuses on the immediate historical and political context of returning prisoner-of-war photographs in the Austrian illustrated press, arguing that they were part of a broad visual discourse deliberately adopted by the postwar media for the purposes of Cold War propaganda.