Atrocities committed by the Nazis during the Holocaust were photographed more intensely that any before. In the time since the images were taken they have been subjected to a perplexing variety of treatments: variously ignored, suppressed, distorted and above all exploited for propaganda purposes. With the use of many photographs, including some never before seen, this book traces the history of this process and asks whether the images can be true representations of the events they were depicting. Yet their provenance, Janina Struk argues, has been less important that the uses to which a wide range of political interests has put them, from the desperate attempts of the war-time underground to provide hard evidence of the death camps to the memorial museums of Europe, the US and Israel today.
By:
Janina Struk
Imprint: I B TAURIS
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions:
Height: 246mm,
Width: 174mm,
Spine: 25mm
Weight: 660g
ISBN: 9781860645464
ISBN 10: 1860645461
Pages: 144
Publication Date: 23 March 2005
Audience:
College/higher education
,
Professional and scholarly
,
General/trade
,
Primary
,
Undergraduate
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active
Atrocities committed by the Nazis during the Holocaust were photographed more intensively than any others, before or since. These images have been subjected to a perplexing variety of treatments: variously ignored, suppressed, distorted and above all exploited for propaganda purposes or political interest. Struk suggests that their provenance - whether taken by the Nazis or their collaborators or by the Jews themselves, their sympathisers and the resistance movements in the occupied territories; or by the Allied forces at the end of the war - has been seen as of secondary importance to their meaning. She recounts the history of the use and abuse of Holocaust photographs and asks whether or not these images can serve as true representations of the events they depict. The questions explored are illustrated with a wide range of photographs, including a number never published before.
Janina Struk is a freelance photographer and writer. She has been a senior lecturer in photography at the University of Westminster in London.
Reviews for Photographing the Holocaust: Interpretations of the Evidence
London Review of Books: excellent book...wonderfully modest and informative. Rabbi Dr Charles H Middleburgh, executive director, Union of Liberal and Progressive Synagogues: Photographing the Holocaust now numbers among the top ten books on the Shoah that I have ever read... seeks carefully and sensitively to explore the way in which photography has been used in connection with the Holocaust... Janina Struk forces the reader to think again... Photographing the Holocaust has a raw power that far exceeds its 216 pages of text and should be essential reading for all who seek an ever deeper understanding of an almost incomprehensibly evil series of events that have scarred the modern world forever. Source Magazine brilliant book... poignant... Struk's book is a welcome counter to even great history writing that is innocent of the problem of representation. Her book is written with style and pace, uses theory without being weighed down by it, and is full of new research... Every historian should read this book and learn what it means to be literate in the present day. H-NET REVIEWS (Humanities and Social Sciences Online)'tells us a great deal about the production, circulation, use and misuse of photographic images of the Holocaust'
