A Child at Gunpoint
A Child at Gunpoint: A Case Study in the Life of a Photo Richard Raskin,
Publisher: Aarhus Universitetsforlag
ISBN: 8779340997
DDC: 940.53180222
Edition: Paperback; 2004-11
Summary:
Widely regarded as the most haunting image we have of the Holocaust,
the photo of a young boy with his hands up being driven from the
Warsaw ghetto has served as a touchstone for everyone from the
Nuremberg prosecutors to Elie Wiesel, and from Susan Sontag to
revisionist ranters on the web. Yet despite its enduring status in
both popular and academic circles, this touchstone of inhumanity has
elicited surprisingly little sustained commentary. In this book,
Richard Raskin provides the first extended consideration of this
photo by examining it from multiple perspectives. He begins by
attempting to describe it objectively as a photographic artifact,
carefully detailing its components and composition. He then presents
a history of how it came about: to illustrate a report that SS
General Jugen Stroop compiled in 1943, documenting for Himmler how he
had crushed the ghetto uprising that spring. The next chapter is
devoted to the claims made for the identity of the boy with his hands
up, as well as for the other captives and the SS man with the machine
gun. The remainder of the book addresses some representative artistic
and polemical uses to which the image has been subjected.
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