Cold war photographic diplomacy: Darren Newbury in conversation with Kylie Thomas

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Date
2025
Authors
Thomas, Kylie
Newbury, Darren
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Taylor and Francis Ltd.
Published Version
10.1080/17526272.2025.2466929
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Abstract
This interview focuses on Cold War Photographic Diplomacy, a detailed study of the United States Information Agency (USIA) and the vast archive of photographs it produced as part of its work in crafting political and social relations between the United States and newly decolonized African countries in the 1950s and 1960s. Newbury’s book illuminates the central place of race in the Cold War imagination in the time of anti-colonial struggle and decolonization in Africa, and the civil rights movement in the United States. When the USIA was shut down at the end of the Cold War, its photographic collection was transferred to the US National Archives, and effectively disappeared from view. In this interview, Kylie Thomas speaks with Darren Newbury about the material his study has brought to the surface, and about what it means to consider these images in the present.
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Keywords
Africa , Archives , Cold War , Photography , Racism , USIA
Citation
Thomas, K., & Newbury, D. (2025). Cold War Photographic Diplomacy: Darren Newbury in Conversation with Kylie Thomas. Journal of War & Culture Studies, 18(2), 203–217. https://doi.org/10.1080/17526272.2025.2466929
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https://hdl.handle.net/10468/17459
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History of Art - Journal Articles
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© 2025, the Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis GroupThis is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution,and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way. The terms on which this article has been published allow the posting of the Accepted Manuscript ina repository by the author(s) or with their consent.