Spectral Evidence

"In this contribution to photographic criticism and psychoanalytic literature, Ulrich Baer traces the hitherto overlooked connection between the experience of trauma and the photographic image. Instead of treating trauma as a photographic "theme," Baer examines the striking parallel between those moments arrested mechanically by photography and those arrested experientially by the traumatized psyche - moments that bypass normal cognition and memory. Taking as points of departure Charcot’s images of hysteria and Freud’s suggestion that the unconscious is structured like a camera, Baer shows how the invention of photography and the emergence of the modern category of "trauma" intersect." "Drawing on recent work in the field of trauma studies, Baer shows how experiences that are inherently split between their occurrence and their remembrance might register in and as photographic images. The photograph’s apparent immunity to time is seen as a call for a future response - a response that is prompted by the ghostly afterlife of every photograph’s subject. In a discussion of a rare collection of color slides taken by a Nazi official in the Lodz ghetto, Baer makes us aware that it is the viewer’s responsibility to account for the spectral evidence embedded in every image."--BOOK JACKET.

Year

2005

Language

English

Publisher

The MIT Press

Editions

2

Pages

218

ISBN

9780262524476

Data source: Wikidata