The album signed by Professor Alin Ciupală PhD aims to reveal to the public two aspects less considered in the discussion about the participation of Romania in the Great War, which resulted in the accomplishment in 1918 of the union of all the territories inhabited by Romanians:

- the importance of the visuals (photographs, illustrated postcards, posters, propaganda leaflets, movies of that time, cartoons) and of other kind of sources (medals, plates) in the research of the past and in the understanding of some complex processes such as the war, the Romanian national project, the international political course, the Great Union. While the researcher mostly favored the written sources, the documents, as he investigated the abovementioned topics, the pictures can be equally relevant and even more straightforward considering their impact. Many of the photos in this album are unique, others are very rare, some are completely forgotten or ignored when they are identified;

- the topics which these sources drive us to are, in their turn, original, e.g.: the participation of Romanian women in the country’s war effort; the establishment on the territory occupied by the Central Powers of camps where French soldiers of African origin were imprisoned, as they were captured by the Germans on the Western front; the role of the simple man, apart from that of the personalities, during the war, both in the frontline and at home; Queen Mary’s extraordinary civic, medical, political contribution; the Great War in the Romanian collective memory after 1918 to this day; the war between the Central Powers and the Allies in terms of propaganda, to which Romania was part from the beginning. Visual history naturally makes written history whole and adds to it a special colour, decomposing it into all of its shades.

 

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