Obraz odzyskany. Fotograficzne portrety ocalonych
An Image Regained

Summary/Abstract: The identification photographs of Auschwitz-Birkenau prisoners are a Holocaust icon. Photography, particularly identification photography, seems especially ambiguous in the context of the Holocaust, and the manner in which it was used and then conceptualized seems especially problematic. The remnants of the postwar photographic practice of former concentration camp prisoners are all the more puzzling: some of them had their photographs taken in concentration camp stripes in professional photo studios. Some dozen photos taken during 1945–1947 show survivors who decided to record their images as ex-prisoners. By doing so they referred to the prewar portrait photography tradition and repeated the gesture of putting on concentration camp outfits and (perhaps) the experience of being photographed in the camp. Compared with the practice of taking identification photographs, the portraits turn out to be a material whose interpretation problematizes the issue of radically different ways of using photography as an institutional tool of oppression on the one hand and as a tool of individual confrontation with the traumatic experience on the other. The comparison of identification and portrait photographs is an occasion to reflect on the ways in which photography was used in the context of the Holocaust and at the same time on the condition of photography as a medium.

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