How are experiences of migration articulated in the medium of photography? How do individuals envision their sense of Self, their subjectivity, and their social status in the new surroundings? How has photography been used (and continues to be used) to not only maintain transnational ties but also to build or depict community and identity across geographical locations?

Studying the pre-digital photographic practices of immigrants in Austria, analyzing their production and content, their functions and use, their social role and mobility, can reveal much about the history of migrations and the complexity of the migratory experience. Looking beyond the normative representations and the public sphere, through private photographs we encounter the individual as a subject instead of an object and we are offered a glimpse into the private sphere and the intimate. In the pre-digital world, possessing an analog camera was of considerable significance to foreign workers. While recording their lives and themselves, the photographs of immigrants were not only efforts at self-documentation, they also represented a tool for self-localization or self-positioning in new surroundings.

Darko Leitner-Stojanov is a historian, holding a PhD degree in Byzantine and Post-Byzantine Studies from the École Pratique des Hautes Études in Paris. His work revolves around oral history, photography, archives, and migrants’ experiences. Most recently he was a JESH/ÖAW visiting researcher at the University of Sarajevo.

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