Fashion Shoot At The Holocaust Memorial

Posted: November 30th, 2009 | Author: | Filed under: Miconian At Large | Tags: , , , , | 4 Comments »
holocaustfashion

An image from the controversial shoot.

Someone did a fashion shoot in the Holocaust memorial in Berlin. Of course, scandal followed, the magazine pulled it from their website, the airline distributing the magazine pulled the magazine, everybody apologized, etc.

The shoot makes a lot of sense. The memorial in Berlin is a huge tourist destination, especially for American Jews (of which I am one), who like to tell each other that they went there. American Jews are also very fond of telling each other that they went to the Holocaust memorial in any city that has one, such as Jerusalem or Washington, D.C.

Going to Holocaust memorials, and talking about going to Holocaust memorials, carries with it a cultural currency. It’s a cool thing to do. It implies sophistication, education, and a progressive attitude. This is especially true of the memorial in Berlin, the existence of which implies that the world is not the same place it was just a few decades previous. If you are an American Jew, (or even an American non-Jew with Jewish friends), then you can’t travel to Berlin and not go to the Holocaust memorial. No doubt it’s a great place to run into Jewish friends, just like Chinese restaurants and movie theaters are in the Midwest on Christmas day.

Places with that kind of drawing power have a mystique to them, and that’s interesting. It’s important to understand that the photographer set the shoot in the memorial, and not in the Holocaust itself, and that the memorial has its own cultural status, its own cache. Of course, when you’re at a memorial, you’re ostensibly supposed to be thinking about the thing that is being memorialized, not the memorial itself. But, quite often, that is simply not the case, and that’s interesting too.

It’s common for people to be offended by the association of something good with something bad. But life doesn’t happen in black and white. The implication that there might be something fashionable about the Holocaust memorial in Berlin is appropriate because there is something fashionable about the Holocaust memorial in Berlin.

millerhitler

Lee Miller in Hitler's bathtub in 1945. (photo by David E. Scherman)

  • http://www.bjpa.org Tara

    Saying it makes sense isn’t saying much though actually. Unless the main criticism against the shoot is senselessness, and then it’s a defense, and then I agree that your defense makes sense.

    I also think it’s funny that you seem more plugged into American Jewish culture than I feel.

  • http://miconian.com miconian

    Tara, that’s an interesting point. However, I don’t think the “main criticism” is any more substantial than that “it’s offensive.” And, while the idea of the project in question is not offensive to me, I’m not enthusiastic about talking anyone else out of being offended.

    So I seek instead to clarify the context that in which, I infer, it made sense to the photographer. Indeed, being offensive was probably part of his whole objective.

  • Nkwwcl

    why lee miller in hitlers bathtub?

    • http://miconian.com/ Michael Bennett Cohn

      Because that image uses the same juxtaposition of artistic intention (and sex, and distance in time) with disturbing historical truths.