This special issue focuses on the relationship between photography and dictatorships in the twentieth century. Gaining control of images was a key objective for dictatorships of that era. Each of them created institutions for monitoring and guiding the production, distribution and interpretation of images. Photography played a central role here, not only as it developed into a mass medium, but also as it spread on a grassroots level below hegemonic media representations, becoming an everyday practice for a wide range of photographic participants. In the five articles for this issue’s special focus, the authors turn the spotlight on various European dictatorships and authoritarian regimes, from Nazi Germany to the Soviet Union (specifically Uzbekistan), from Portugal under Salazar to Greece under Metaxas, and finally East Germany. They investigate the conditions for photography in political systems unbound by the rule of law or civil liberties, as well as the options for action and forms of expression available to the makers of photos.