Re: [Leica] Strategic area bombing of Germany - Operation Gomorrah - photographs

[Ernest Nitka <enitka@twcny.rr.com>]

Tim - Try;

Entering Germany 1944-1949 by tony Vaccaro   publ Taschen recently

ernie
On Friday, August 1, 2003, at 04:25 PM, Tim Atherton wrote:

> I have just been reading W.G. Sebalds essays "On the Natural History of
> Destruction" about the Allied strategic area-bombing campaign 
> undertaken in
> order to destroy German cities during WWII - in part known as Operation
> Gomorrah. During the campaign, from 1942 onwards to the end of the war 
> 131
> German towns and cities were targeted, with 600,000 German civilian 
> dead and
> seven and a half million left homeless and displaced.
>
> The devastation and impact were immense. What Sebald examines is the 
> almost
> complete lack (with only very few exceptions) of any kind of serious, 
> in
> depth contemporaneous writing (fiction or non-fiction) within Germany 
> about
> these events, either from during the period 1942-45 or in the immediate
> psot-war period. He bleieved that given the astonishing scope of the
> devestation there was in fact a sort of collective denial within 
> Germany
> about the experience, and ominous silence that has left a large gap in 
> the
> cultural memory.
>
> My question is this: is anyone aware of any in depth photogrpahic work
> examining and or recording/documenting this overwhelmingly massive
> destruction and loss of civilian life - especially German work (I 
> imagine
> there is a certain amount of post-war allied photography, as there is a
> small amount of writing on the subject).
>
> Sebald goes on to argue that the experience of these events obviously 
> had a
> huge effect on the collective German post-war psyche - but the 
> overwhelming
> silence about the events has had an equally profound effect. (These 
> city
> ruins lasted for some good period of time after the war, despite
> reconstruction.)
>
> I found it intriguing reading what he has to say about the written 
> record
> (or lack thereof) and that naturally led me to think about the 
> photographic
> record.
>
> tim a
>
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