Workshop: ‘Photography, the Holocaust, and the Visualisation of Difficult Memories’

About

Saturday 9 April 2016 from 10am - 1pm

Part of an AHRC-funded cultural engagement project between the University of Nottingham and the National Holocaust Centre & Museum.

Photography is a medium employed extensively in Holocaust education and remembrance, drawing viewers into these events in powerful and often intensely moving ways. Yet what appear at first glance as neutral historical documents, conveying an ‘authentic’ glimpse of this difficult past, are overwhelmingly ‘perpetrator photographs’. Thousands of NS propaganda photographers and other implicated individuals created a photographic record of how they wanted later generations to remember this history. Photographs by victims of the regime, by contrast, are exceedingly rare. This raises difficult questions about how we view such images, display them in museums, and use them in educating the public about the Holocaust. The workshop will explore these questions through short talks and discussions of specific examples, and will consist of three parts:

Talk and Q&A with Prof. Maiken Umbach. ‘Looking at Difficult Histories: The role of photography in remembering the Third Reich’ (1 hour)

Break with refreshments. During the break, participants will be invited to examine the photographs provided and record their thoughts and impressions. (30 mins)

Talk and guided discussion with Dr. Victoria Stiles. ‘Remembering atrocities: How can we keep the victims in focus?’ (45 mins)

Booking required: to reserve a place on this workshop, call Bromley House Library on 0115 9473134