Selfies in Auschwitz

Popular and contested representations in a digital generation

Dados Bibliográficos

ID12905367
AutoresJ Feldman (0000-0002-8747-4844, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, autor correspondente), Norma Musih (0000-0003-3388-4319, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev)
Ano2022
Volume16
Fascículo2
Páginas403-420
Data de publicação2022-07-13
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoMemory Studies (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 1750-6980 • E-ISSN: 1750-6999
EditoraSAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/17506980221101111
OpenAlexW4285083572
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas17
Referências 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