History and Theory 49 (February 2010), 90-103 © Wesleyan University 2010 ISSN: 0018-2656

REVIEW ESSAYS

WHY PHOTOGRAPHY MATTERS TO THE THEORY OF HISTORY

MICHAEL S. ROTH

IMAGES IN SPITE OF ALL: FOUR PHOTOGRAPHS FROM AUSCHWITZ. By Georges Didi-

Huberman. Translated by Shane B. Lillis. Chicago and London: University of
Chicago Press, 2008. Pp. 232.

WHY PHOTOGRAPHY MATTERS AS ART AS NEVER BEFORE. By Michael Fried. New

Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2008. Pp. ix, 409.

Il n’y a pas d’irreprésentable comme propriété de

l’événement. Il y a seulement des choix.
—Jacques Rancière1
Photography maintains the presentness of the
world by accepting our absence from it.
—Stanley Cavell2

ABSTRACT

Georges Didi-Huberman’s study is concerned with epistemological and ethical questions

that arise from visual representations of the Shoah, while Michael Fried’s is concerned
with the ontological possibilities explored by contemporary art photography. The books
have two things in common: an argument against postmodern skepticism, and an insistence
WKDWSKRWRJUDSK\KDVEHFRPHDÀHOGLQZKLFKTXHVWLRQVRIKLVWRU\WUXWKDQGDXWKHQWLF-
ity are being explored with particular acuity. Rather than reject even the possibility that
photographs have something to tell us about the Shoah, Didi-Huberman shows that they
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aspects of the past.
Fried shows that contemporary photographic work has taken on the ambitions of high
modernism by accepting the challenge of “to-be-seenness.” Photography as a “historical
SUDFWLFHµGRHVQRWHVFDSHIURPWKHGLIÀFXOWLHVRIHYLGHQFHDQGRIWKH´FRQVWUXFWHGµQDWXUH
of historical understanding; photography functions neither as a pure trace of the past, nor
as a mere invitation to spectacle.

Keywords: Holocaust, photography, sublime, theatricality, absorption, everyday, Barthes

These two books approach photography with very different theoretical agendas.
Georges Didi-Huberman’s short, polemical study is concerned with epistemo-

1. Jacques Rancière, “S’il y a de l’irreprésentable,” L’art et le mémoire des camps: representer,

exterminer (Paris: Seuil, 2001), 96.
2. Stanley Cavell, The World Viewed: Reflections on the Ontology of Film (Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 1971), 23.
 WHY PHOTOGRAPHY MATTERS TO THE THEORY OF HISTORY 91
logical and ethical questions that arise from visual representations of the Shoah.
Michael Fried’s large, richly illustrated tome is concerned with the ontological
lessons explored by contemporary art photography. Didi-Huberman is focused on
small photographic traces of mass murder that can change our relation to history;
Fried is focused on large-scale images that can change our relation to art. Never-
theless, the books have two things in common: an argument against postmodern
VNHSWLFLVPDQGDQLQVLVWHQFHWKDWSKRWRJUDSK\KDVEHFRPHDÀHOGLQZKLFKTXHV-
tions of history, truth, and authenticity are being explored with particular acuity.
How do photographs work in telling the truth about history? What is the work
of photography in illuminating the grounds of truth-telling at this moment in the
history of art?

7KHÀUVWSDUWRIImages in Spite of All is a reprint of an essay that Didi-Huberman

prepared for the catalogue of an exhibition: Mémoires des camps: Photographies
des camps de concentration et d’extermination Nazis (1933–1999).3 This essay
concentrates on four photographs that were taken in Auschwitz and smuggled
out of the camp by members of the Sonderkommando—the special units of death
camp prisoners who were charged with overseeing the work of the crematoria. At
least two of the images depict what seem to be recently gassed bodies as they were
being cremated in front of the gas chamber of crematorium V.
Making these pictures involved the risky cooperation of several people. The
camera probably was smuggled into the camp by a worker, and then it had to
be carefully sneaked into the crematorium while others posted watch. The four
SLFWXUHVKDGWREHWDNHQTXLFNO\DQGWKHQWKHSLHFHRIÀOPLQWKHFDPHUDZDVUH-
moved and rolled into a tube of toothpaste that was spirited out of the camp by an
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Resistance, with a note written by two prisoners:
8UJHQW6HQGWZRPHWDOUROOVRIÀOPIRU[DVIDVWDVSRVVLEOH6HQGLQJ\RXSKRWR-
graphs of Birkenau showing prisoners sent to gas chambers. One photo shows one of the
stakes at which bodies were burned when the crematorium could not manage to burn all
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photos to Tell—we think enlargements of the photos can be sent further. (17)

The note is evidence of a will to document the mechanized murder that so many
had described (and still describe) as “unimaginable.” This so-called inability to
imagine or represent the annihilation is at the core of Didi-Huberman’s study.
6RPHKDYHVDLGWKDWWKHÀQDORIIHQVHWRWKHZLWQHVVVXUYLYRUZDVQRWWREHEH-
lieved. If the non-witness could not imagine that “such a thing could happen,”
then the testimony would literally fall on deaf ears. The blank stares that greeted
a witness because the testimony could not be imagined was yet another stage in
the process of obliteration.

3. Clément Chéroux et al., Mémoires des camps: Photographies des camps de concentration et
d’extermination Nazis (1933–1999) (Paris: Editions Marval, 2001).