The Empire Strikes Back. Image Battles and Image Frontlines during the Russo–Turkish War of 1877–1878

"The “Turkish atrocities” of 1876 were one of the main events that triggered the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–1878. The atrocities were among the most important media events of the 19th century in the Western press, not least because of the many images that were published. Comparable pictures of massacres of Muslim civilians by Russian soldiers the year after, in 1877, were not publicly known at the time. Thus a recently discovered series of photographs of the “Russian atrocities” of 1877 sheds new light on the media history of the Eastern Crisis and at the same time demonstrates that the war between the Ottoman Empire and the Eastern Orthodox coalition led by Russia was also fought at the modern frontline of images. The historical analysis of the motifs deployed in this image battle reveals the multiple levels of visual transfer processes that were in operation, examples of which are discussed in this essay.