DOUBLE DISTANCE
Anna Duńczyk-Szulc, Jewish Historical Institute
The exhibition Light of the Negative / Images from the Ringelblum Archive and the Jerzy Lewczyński archive / Reinterpreted opened at the E. Ringelblum Jewish Historical Institute, features a reinterpreted collection of photographs, stored in the Underground Archive of the Warsaw Ghetto in a new study and perspective.
The photographs are presented in a way that gives the reader (the reader, not just the viewer!) the opportunity to read the collection and take advantage, among other things, of the interpretative guidelines contained in the text by Professor Georges Didi-Huberman and the new findings regarding the locations, circumstances and heroes of the photographs.
Reinterpreted
Documents and photographs hidden in 1942 by members of the Jewish conspiratorial group Oneg Shabbat contained testimonies to the fate of Jews during the German occupation.
Found in the ruins of the Warsaw Ghetto in 1946, these testimonies became the voice of the murdered and a great challenge for researchers.
The collection of photographs located in one of the boxes contained 76 pictures. However, it was not the only collection in the Archives. In another box, the photographic file was completely destroyed due to moisture. So, were these 76 images a complete whole? Was the destroyed set a supplement to this collection? The first objective, therefore, was to determine the coherency of the collection; an attempt to associate it with the concept of the entire Archive, as well as to examine the images themselves, and their language. Consequently, two trails were elucidated. The first one was analysed and interpreted by Georges Didi-Huberman, who suggested the following in his essay on the archive: Perhaps it is necessary to go back to the beginning and start all over again: to look simply, more simply. Before examining each image, I try to consider the whole collection; in a way, this presupposes going fast, “flipping through.” But it also gives a valuable indication of the overall gestus, the adopted method, the suggested montage. Constellations become apparent. Proceeding in this fashion, I first notice that all the photographs were taken from inside the ghetto; such is the primary – fundamental – logic of this collection of images, which, if necessary, would attest to its consistency with the Oneg Shabbat’s historical approach of documenting the fate of the Warsaw ghetto from within – any other point of view being impossible since, in this case, the observer does not enjoy any privilege of location in relation to the observed.
Does the collection of these photographs form a corpus?
The second, parallel trail was the search for links between the creators of the Archive, their intentions and that of the photographer (one of the observers) in historical documents and the photographs themselves.
Is the photographer's presence more or less perceptible in his works? By deciding when to take a picture and how it should look, the photographer always imposes his or her perception criteria. He interprets the world through a defined recording, creating a series of images or arranging them in cycles. Furthermore, there is the intention of the ordering party - presumably, in this case, Emanuel Ringelblum, who planned to take photographs to illustrate important issues in the context of the entire Archive. In the autumn of 1942, he noted down: "Photographs [:] Ghetto, Police, Thirteenth Street, Jewish Model, Beggar, Children, Social Institutions, Sejm, Photographs of Gestapo and police officers, the Ghetto in Piotrków".
Most of these subjects are in the preserved photographs, but not all of them have survived to this day, and in some cases, only the titles have survived.