We have seen the films of professionals and propagandists
celebrate Adolf Hitler, his SS henchmen, and the Nazi Party. But
what of the documentary films and photographs of amateurs,
soldiers, and others involved in the war effort who were simply
going about their lives amid death and destruction? And what of the
films and photographs that want us to believe there was no death
and destruction? This book asks how such images have shaped our
memories and our memorialization of World War II and the Holocaust.
Frances Guerin considers the implications of amateur films and
photographs taken by soldiers, bystanders, resistance workers, and
others in Nazi Germany.
Her book explores how photographs taken by soldiers and
bystanders on the Eastern Front, depictions of everyday life in the
Lodz ghetto, and home movies and family albums of Hitler's mistress
Eva Braun, among others, can challenge the conventional idea that
such images reflect Nazi ideology because they are taken by
perpetrators and sympathizers. "Through Amateur Eyes" upsets our
expectations and demonstrates how these images can be understood as
chillingly unrehearsed images of war, trauma, and loss.
Many of these images have been reused--often unacknowledged--in
contemporary narratives memorializing World War II: museum
exhibitions, made-for-television documentaries, documentary films,
and the Internet. Guerin shows how modern uses of these images
often reinforce well-rehearsed narratives of cultural memory. She
offers a critical new perspective on how we can incorporate such
still and moving images into processes of witnessing the traumas of
the past in the present moment.
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