American Propagandists in Paris: The History and Visual Apparatus of Informations et Documents, 1954-1957

<p dir="ltr">This thesis focuses on the history and visual apparatus of the first three years of the French publication Information et documents (1954-1978), a photographically illustrated magazine that was published and operated by the United States Information Services (USIS), a branch of the State Department dedicated to producing anti-communist propaganda during the Cold War. This thesis illuminates the complicated history of the USIS, their political motivations, and their strategies for ideological combat in France and the outre-mer. It accomplishes this by examining the relationship between the visual media produced for the magazine and its ideological platform. Informations et documents skirted the relationship between photojournalism and propaganda, shirking ethical transparency while creating photographic media that presented American individualism and industrial capitalism in an artful, transatlantic modernist package, depicting the United States as a utopia defined by wealth, social mobility, and ease while presenting the USSR as wracked with profound unhappiness and paranoia.</p>