COMMUNIST STARDOM IN THE COLD WAR: JOSIP

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 portrai