Secular icons

Brink, Cornelia
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Title Secular icons : looking at photographs from Nazi concentration camps.
Original Library/publisher History and Memory
Studies in Representation of the Past. Tel-Aviv
Host Item History and Memory
Studies in Representation of the Past 12,1 (2000) 135-150
Description The photographs taken by Allied army photographers during the liberation of Nazi camps (Bergen-Belsen, Dachau, Buchenwald, etc.), besides being documentary evidence, have also turned into cult images and have become icons. Compares these photographs to the icons used by the Orthodox Church. Like the latter, the photographs are associated with reality in the perception of the viewers
they represent the reality of the camps. They serve as symbols of the Holocaust and create an immediate connection to the historical events. They canonize the victims
through them, the victims become part of society's memorial canon. However, they only show the result of the murder, thus veiling the crime itself - just like the icon veils the "inner sanctum." Contends that the photographs barely cope with their cultural task - to represent the Nazi crimes authentically. (From the Bibliography of the Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism - The Hebrew University of Jerusalem)
Language English
National Library system number 990002610380705171
Links Click here for fulltext (may be restricted to subscribers)
MARC RECORDS
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