Selfies in Auschwitz

Popular and contested representations in a digital generation

Datos Bibliográficos

ID12905367
AutoresJ Feldman (0000-0002-8747-4844, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, autor de correspondencia), Norma Musih (0000-0003-3388-4319, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev)
Año2022
Volumen16
Número2
Páginas403-420
Fecha de publicación2022-07-13
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaMemory Studies (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 1750-6980 • E-ISSN: 1750-6999
EditorialSAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/17506980221101111
OpenAlexW4285083572
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas17
Referencias citadas29

Selfies at Auschwitz have become increasingly popular, and have generated agitated public debate. While some see them as an engaged form of witnessing, others denounce them as a narcissistic desecration of the dead. We analyze the taking, composition, and circulation of several of the most popular selfies of Auschwitz and the online reactions to them. The practice of selfies marks a shift from witness to witnessee and from onsite to online presence. Yet it also builds on previous practices: photography, postcards and souvenirs, the affordances of the architecture of the memorial site, the bodily presence of the survivor-witness as mediator of the Holocaust, and the redemptive value assigned to the physical presence of the visitor as “witness of the witness.” We suggest that the combination of continuities with the past alongside the radical break with previous witnessing practices empowers selfie-takers, while arousing the indignation of gatekeepers of Holocaust memory

Aesthetics · Affordance · Art · Indignation · Media studies · Political science · Politics · Selfie · Sociology · The Holocaust · Visitor pattern · Visual arts · Witness · Computer Science · History · Law · Law in Society and Culture · Memory, Trauma, and Commemoration · Psychology · Visual Culture and Art Theory