On Photographs at War: Images of the South African 6th Armored Division in Italy 1944-1945

The photography of the South African 6th Armored Division campaign in Italy in the World War II affords this essay its occasion for a consideration of the relation of photography to the political and historical project to which it pretends. The essay takes a loosely semiotic interest in the "signification" of war and of time, extending the sense of that process to encompass not only the mediation of concepts of the world, but also their invention against the disordering current of time. Its analysis of photographic signs form the campaign offers some specific insights into the particulars of the South African experience in the Italian theater, but more into the general compact between photography and history. © 2014 © 2014 Taylor & Francis.