Image of the Popular Front

During the 1930s Europe was convulsed by political violence. The National Socialists rose to power in Germany and Fascists campaigned in Britain, Spain and France. Yet Europe was also transformed in this decade through new applications of film, photography and radio. In fact, these political and technological developments were closely intertwined. The Image of the Popular Front demonstrates this by tracing the history of the Popular Front in France, one of the first mass movements to take advantage of the new forms of mass media.

SIMON DELL is Lecturer in Art History in the School of World Art Studies and Museology at the University of East Anglia.

List of Illustrations * Introduction: 6 February 1934 * The Republican Imaginary: Hegemony and Its Reproduction * ‘People of France’: The Image Created * ‘Free Men’: The Image Contested * ‘The Apocalypse of Fraternity’: The Image Destroyed * Epilogue: 30 November 1938 * Bibliography