A network of photographs: The visual public memory of the Dutch Provo movement, 1967–2016

This article builds on efforts to connect visual culture, social movements, and memory studies. It introduces the concept of visual public memory through a study of the circulation of photographs of the Dutch anarchist movement Provo between 1967 and 2016. It demonstrates that the visual public memory of a movement can be captured in a network composed of carriers of memory (newspapers, magazines, exhibitions, books), memorata (the remembered events), and mnemonic actors (actors that circulate the carriers of memory). Based on a qualitative interpretation of this network, the article follows four routes through it, uncovering the role of seemingly a-political mnemonic actors, such as municipal governments and museums, in the visual public memory of Provo. Showing how photographs are uniquely able to carry political possibility into memory, this article argues that visual representation plays a crucial role in how social movements are remembered.