Jermut aseissa – jermuilmiö rajajääkäreiden jatkosodan (1941–1944) ajan valokuvissa maskuliinisuutta, sankaruutta ja sotilasidentiteettiä rakentamassa ja purkamassa

Authors

• Helena Pirttisaari-Sundström Helsingin yliopisto

DOI: https://doi.org/10.37449/ennenjanyt.145014

Keywords:

War photos, Visual history, Masculinity, Heroism, Soldierly identity, Stereotyp, Stereotype, Tough warrior, Second World War

Abstract

Drawing on the phototheoretical works of Barthes and Sontag, visual history, gender theory, and military sociology, my article examines the self-image of Border Jaegers during the Continuation War. In line with contemporary German cultural-historical studies, the individual photo albums are analysed as complex media in which biographical and social, ideological and individual narratives and discourses interact and intersect. I analyse so called jermu photos in the visual narratives of private photo albums of soldiers compared to the propaganda pictures and with regard to the masculinity ideal of the era. The jermu photos deconstructed military stereotypes, thus including aspects of a counterculture.

I regard jermu photos as a genre that occurred in the intersection of the official and unofficial organisation culture of the army. They appear as a social distinction between officers and frontier soldiers, as a frontier fashion and counterculture. The jermu photos are taken as a context-dependent humour in the social groups and as a part of the brotherhood-in-arms on the front. They construct consciously soldierly identities and participate unconsciously in constructing national identities.

My article shedlights the intersection of masculinity, emotions and politival ideologies as well as the use of photographs as a means of constructing collective and individual identities and as a historical source. The photographs that reproduced masculinity and stereotypical heroism participated in the national discourse and collective identities, whereas jermu photos challenged the linear national narrative. Both had a function in the mental coping of the soldiers.