The photographs of people who were victims of Nazi persecution: building a collection; interrogating its meaning
Lead Research Organisation:
University of Nottingham
Department Name: History
Abstract
This project will consolidate IWM's collections relating to the Holocaust through collecting, copying and documenting the photographs that exist of the families of former Jewish and non-Jewish refugees and Holocaust survivors, and will produce a PhD which will reflect on these collections and determine new meanings from them. Yaffa Eliach's There once was a world, Noam Shenker's Reframing Holocaust Testimony and other works have addressed this kind of material to some degree, but there has yet to be an in-depth academic study based on the photographs of Holocaust survivors who made their home in the UK.
The project would involve continuing an existing IWM initiative to collect the photographs of the pre-war lives of families whose possessions and/ or testimony have been given to IWM. The resulting collection would mean that the present project to create new Holocaust Galleries (due to open in 2020), the learning programmes that will support them and future interpretations of the Holocaust at IWM will be backed up by a high-quality, well-researched collection of images.
Similar photographs can be seen in exhibitions across Europe, the US and Israel, and are increasingly being shown and interpreted on websites (Virtual Shtetl on the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews website being a recent example). The IWM project would offer the opportunity for the student to connect with these other initiatives, and to import best practice to IWM, as well as adding to the sum of knowledge on this subject through our own webpages.
Research areas might include: early twentieth century studio photography in Central and Eastern Europe, including families' preferences for particular activities to be recorded and how and whether this differed according to different occupations/ religious beliefs/ regions; a study of how photographs of families have been used in museums and other displays, including the thinking behind those displays and how they have been received; and an examination of the journeys which the photographs themselves took and how they have been viewed, discussed and treated by the families concerned.
The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum's Photographic Archive will be a source of advice and information, as will The Wiener Library, The National Holocaust Centre and Museum, Yad Vashem and the USC Shoah Foundation.
The project would involve continuing an existing IWM initiative to collect the photographs of the pre-war lives of families whose possessions and/ or testimony have been given to IWM. The resulting collection would mean that the present project to create new Holocaust Galleries (due to open in 2020), the learning programmes that will support them and future interpretations of the Holocaust at IWM will be backed up by a high-quality, well-researched collection of images.
Similar photographs can be seen in exhibitions across Europe, the US and Israel, and are increasingly being shown and interpreted on websites (Virtual Shtetl on the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews website being a recent example). The IWM project would offer the opportunity for the student to connect with these other initiatives, and to import best practice to IWM, as well as adding to the sum of knowledge on this subject through our own webpages.
Research areas might include: early twentieth century studio photography in Central and Eastern Europe, including families' preferences for particular activities to be recorded and how and whether this differed according to different occupations/ religious beliefs/ regions; a study of how photographs of families have been used in museums and other displays, including the thinking behind those displays and how they have been received; and an examination of the journeys which the photographs themselves took and how they have been viewed, discussed and treated by the families concerned.
The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum's Photographic Archive will be a source of advice and information, as will The Wiener Library, The National Holocaust Centre and Museum, Yad Vashem and the USC Shoah Foundation.
People |
ORCID iD |
| Elizabeth Harvey (Primary Supervisor) | |
| Alice Tofts (Student) |