Browsing by Author "Paasu, Aimi"

This thesis focuses on the representations of childhood that are portrayed in Suomen Kuvalehti during World War II. The years included in the research are between 1938 and 1946. The focus is on how children and childhood and their representations are portrayed in the issues published during the war and how the portrayal differs (if it differs) from those published during peacetime in 1938 and 1946. The subject has not been studied in the context of Suomen Kuvalehti before. This magazine was specifically chosen for this study because of its popularity and long history as a mirror of the Finnish society and everyday life. Childhood has been a reoccurring theme in wartime visual communications for decades. The juxtaposition between the innocence and hope of childhood and the horrors and trauma of war offer an interesting study on the representations of childhood that emerge in visual materials during crisis. This is particularly interesting from a historical point of view: how do these images communicate the ongoing crisis and the society surrounding them? How is childhood portrayed in them and what representations become central? The representations of childhood are linked to the context of war and Finnish society during wartime. The research questions are as follows: How does childhood appear in the cover photos? What representations are found and become central in these images? Are the children added to the context of war or removed from it? The aim is not to analyze every single cover photo but, after an overlook of the material, focus on a few examples that represent the whole. The photographs are analyzed in their publishing context using qualitative content analysis. The main themes of this thesis focus on the change in the concept of childhood in history, the use of childhood in photos in wartime publications and the historical context of these images in the Finnish society. The method used in this thesis is qualitative content analysis. The analysis consists of the cover photos are connected to childhood and thus selected into closer analysis. The theoretical framework regarding representation is based in the representational system as introduced by Stuart Hall. Visual materials construct representational systems since they produce meanings: photographs contain cultural meanings that are interpreted in their specific context. The cover photos analyzed in this thesis contain two levels of meaning: the world of things and the conceptual world. These levels are approximately the same as social constructionists’ material world that is visible for the eye as well as the symbolic world that ties meanings to the intangible. Social constructionism carries the analysis forward with emphasis on context-specificity. Childhood has been a way for the magazine to communicate life going forward during difficult times. The cover photos of Suomen Kuvalehti support the idea of the spirit of childhood. They show children in a happy atmosphere doing things that are typical to them. War is presented simultaneously with childhood in only a few photos. This means that the context of war is mainly detached from childhood and its representations. Children are not depicted doing work: they are mostly shown in their leisure time or in school. Wartime cover photos do deal with war when portraying soldiers etc., but the connection to the war’s topical events is almost nonexistent since this is not a news publication. Cover photos that include children and childhood in particular have little connection to the real-time world.