Cold War Camera is an exciting new collaborative project that explores photography’s role in mediating the Cold War. Under the supervision of professors Thy Phu and Andrea Noble, it aims to go beyond the standard iconography of the mushroom cloud, surveillance footage and news reports to explore the wider visual culture of the Cold War as captured on camera.

The project focuses on transnational connections with a particular emphasis on the Global South, to explore the ‘other’ Cold War often overlooked in the popular narrative of rival superpowers competing in western Europe.

Cold War Camera launched earlier in 2014 with a three-day conference in Guatemala and a research workshop is scheduled for February 2015 in Mexico City.

The project’s blog In The Darkroom recently went live and is already hosting some fascinating essays on the camera’s unique role in recording, documenting, identifying and memorialising the Cold War.

Image: From the blog post ‘Life in Bolivia‘: During a mass meeting workers cling to a monument honoring heroes of the 1952 revolution. Taken from LIFE (4 January 1964): 64.