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Virtual Talk: What is Jewish Photography?
October 31, 2022 @ 6:00 pm - 7:00 pm
The Salzmann family from Berlin, on holiday in 1937. Ruth Salzmann Becker papers, courtesy of the Iowa Women’s Archives, University of Iowa Libraries.
Through whose eyes are we seeing the past? When it comes to the history of the Holocaust, we often rely on perpetrator photos. To counter-balance this biased gaze, we need to draw on Jewish photos: photos celebrating Jewish lives before 1933, but also photos documenting lives marred by exclusion and persecution, and photos of Jewish flight, migration, and lives re-built beyond Europe.
But what makes a photo Jewish? Is it just a question of who held the camera? A photographer is rarely in sole control: those acting in front of the camera co-create the photos; pictorial conventions are at play; and, crucially, a photo’s meaning also takes shape through its subsequent uses.
This talk takes a fresh look at a sample of ‘Jewish’ photos, asks how we can interpret them, and explores ways in which they might reveal aspects of Jewish experiences on which other sources remain silent.
About the speaker:
Maiken Umbach is Professor of Modern History at the University of Nottingham, and currently seconded as chief academic advisor to the UK’s National Holocaust Centre and Museum. Maiken directs a multi-disciplinary research project on “Photography as Political Practice in National Socialism”, and has published widely on photography, Nazism and the Holocaust; recent books include “Photography, Migration, and Identity: A German-Jewish-American Story” (with Scott Sulzener, 2018), and “Private Life and Privacy in Nazi Germany (with Elizabeth Harvey, Johannes Hürter, Aandreas Wirsching, 2019).
Event guidelines for those joining online:
1. The Library will send you a Zoom link and joining instructions via email prior to the event. Please check your junk email folders.
2. Please try and join 5 minutes before the event start time and we will let you into the room (do try and bear with us if this takes a few minutes).
3. If you would like to ask a question during the event, please type your question into the chat function, and we will endeavour to answer as many questions as possible during the Q&A. Your webcam will not be seen during this event.
4. The event will be recorded for the Library’s YouTube channel and will be shared at a later date.
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2 comments so far
Greetings. I am moving house the day of this event, but would really like to have access to its information and insight; will this be archived/saved? Thank you!
Hi Danielle, the event will be streamed via Zoom, and we’ll post the recording on our YouTube channel shortly afterwards, so you can catch up on the talk there.