Visuality of Peace and Conflict

Visuality shapes all aspects of peace and conflict. Images influence how we view, understand, and respond to violence and how we find solutions to entrenched problems. This chapter examines the issues at stake by highlighting the need to take into account the historical dimension of images. It focuses, in particular, on how humanitarian ideals and norms have emerged in response to depictions of violence and suffering. It then explores how understandings of peace are inherently linked to ensuing humanitarian imagery. Images, in this sense, have been and continue to be critical to enabling local and global audiences to see, perceive of, and feel for communities that endure conflict and are working toward peaceful solutions. It is in this sense that visuality—in its various manifestations—plays an important part of reconciliation, statebuilding, and peace formation.