https://doi.org/10.31261/NoZ.2016.02.13
"If It Was only the Outer Voice of Sky and Cloud". On the (Non-)banality of the Background. From the Photo Album of Karl Höcker
This text is an attempt at interpreting the photographs depicting SS officers captured in the moments of holiday relax. After fulfilling their everyday duties in Auschwitz, the SS men – in Höcker’s pictures from his album – rest, walk, joke, sing, feast and flirt with women; they are cheerful, smiling and carefree. The study of the album – revealed only in 2007, consisting of 116 pictures taken between June and December 1944 – is an impossible study, a study of silence, of commenting voices, a study spread between black and white, photography and the world, words and aphonia, hell and its background. It is the account of helplessness – of the gaze, language and understanding.
Key words: photography, memory, image, album, Holocaust, Auschwitz
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No. 2 (2016)
Published:
Język Polski
English