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.
Janina Struk is a freelance photographer and writer. She has been a senior lecturer in photography at the University of Westminster in London.
Title: Photographing the Holocaust: Interpretations of the Evidence
Author: Struk, Janina
ISBN: 9781860645464
Binding:
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd
Publication Date: 2005-03-23
Number of Pages: 264
Weight: 0.3584 kg
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'