Photo/Memory: Recovering Memory and Identity through Photographs in Post-1945 Art and Literature

Abstract

The use of the photograph is particularly prevalent among artists of the first post-war generation, born shortly before or after Stunde Null (Zero Hour), 1945. These artists become the inheritors of the horrors perpetrated by their parents’ generation, and it is through the photograph that they are united in the struggle to comprehend the past. The present paper explores the integration of photographs in both painting and literature as a means of expressing memory and identity in the aftermath of World War II trauma, with regard to works by the writer W. G. Sebald (1944-2001; Austerlitz, 2001) and artists Anselm Kiefer (b. 1945; Heroische Sinnbilder, 1969) and Hughie O’Donoghue (b. 1953; Anabasis, 2003). Their links to the Individual contribute to the collective experience of recollecting the Nazi era. The extent to which a photograph can be considered evidence of history is examined, with reference to the image’s context, its original narrative and the narrative imposed on photographs by these artists. Anabasis, Austerlitz and Heroische Sinnbilder are all presented in book format and contain a similar genre of photograph. By evaluating what constitutes the essence and the atmosphere of a photograph, it is possible to describe the photographs used in all three works as visual metaphors which either facilitate or obstruct the retrieval of memory and the recovery of the past. Individual photographs are discussed in terms of their artistic manipulation within these visual and literary artworks, with a theoretical approach taken to analysing their function as triggers of memory.