| Summary: | Communist Stardom in the Cold War: Josip Broz Tito in Western and Yugoslav Photography, 1943-1980
Nikolina Kurtovic
Doctor of Philosophy
Department of Art
University of Toronto
2010
Abstract
This dissertation examines the iconographic and ideological aspects of the public image of Josip Broz Tito, the communist leader of Socialist Yugoslavia and one of the major historical personalities of the twentieth century. By studying the specific historical, political, and cultural contexts of Tito’s changing iconography between 1943 and 1980, I considers a dynamic relationship between the Western and Eastern perspectives on his leadership style, personality, and role, as communicated in the idiom of Western photojournalism and celebrity photography, as well as the style of official presidential photography in Yugoslavia. I analyze photo-essays on Tito published in Life, Time, and Picture Post, and in the official Yugoslav magazines, Yugoslavia and Yugoslav Review, as well as his portraits by Yousuf Karsh and by Ivo Eterovic in his photo-book Tito’s Private Life. I engage the issues of image reception by studying fundamental stereotypes within the canon of Tito photography, exploring their relation to the popular and political discourses on war heroism, resistance myth, masculinity, leadership, communism, disease, romance, family, leisure and celebrity in the U.S. during World War Two and the Cold War. Tito’s photographs are compared with relevant examples in modern portrait photography, photojournalism, and European painting, thereby situating Tito’s example in the tradition of Western political image making, but also in relation to local traditions. My dissertation shows that the practical role of the cult of Tito in the American press during the Cold War was to render him and Yugoslavia as examples for the satellite countries, and to enlist popular support for U.S. policy. It also helped Tito navigate a political crisis following his 1948 break with Stalin. The iconography created in this context contributed to the genesis and modernizing of Yugoslav presidential photography in the 1950s. Appropriating the rhetoric and formal devices of Western celebrity and glamour photography, Yugoslav photographs created a set of presidential stereotypes and their photographs were bearers of the conventional narrative of Tito’s presidency in Yugoslav magazines and books addressing Western audiences between 1960 and 1980. My dissertation underscores the role of cross-cultural contacts and contexts for developing, maintaining, and understanding of Tito’s publicity and celebrity in the West.
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