Describing Who?

Photographs taken in today's Poland by professional Jewish photographers tend not to be documentary; they are dominated by historical trauma and post-war politics. Poland is construed as synonymous with Auschwitz and the Shoah, and the Poles with hitlerite Nazi Germans. Long-term photographic projects, though, yield more actualized representations.

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"Describing Who?" reveals the significance of photographs taken in contemporary Poland by professional American, French and Israeli Jewish photographers. Writing critically from the vantage point of her Polish and Jewish background, Joanna Auron-Górska argues that while visual representations of Poland and the Poles may appear atemporal, they are neither ahistorical nor apolitical. They are, instead, influenced by the culturally conditioned construct within which Poland serves to maintain the memory of the Shoah, by war trauma, and by post-war politics. The attitudes of foreign Western Jewry to non-Jewish Poles and Poland have so far received limited scholarship; this analysis is a contribution towards enlightening the conversation between Poles and Jews from outside of Poland.