Nadya Bair’s lecture explores why cultural critic Susan Sontag’s On Photography (1977), which questioned the ethics of looking at atrocity photographs, has crowded out alternative approaches to engaging with Holocaust photographs. Bair will analyze the popularity of Sontag's writing amid History's "visual turn" which began in the 1980s, and then analyze alternative historical and theoretical starting points for engaging with Holocaust-era photographs. The talk argues for a deeper engagement with pictures and photography writing produced during WWII, including in the newspaper PM, which published some of the first Holocaust photographs in the United States.

This event will take place at the Wells Fargo Auditorium in the UNR Knowledge Center (MIKC 124).