Spectral Evidence ─ The Photography of Trauma

In this remarkable contribution to photographic criticism and psychoanalyticliterature, Ulrich Baer traces the hitherto overlooked connection between the experience of traumaand the photographic image. Instead of treating trauma as a photographic "theme," Baer examines thestriking parallel between those moments arrested mechanically by photography and those arrestedexperientially by the traumatized psyche -- moments that bypass normal cognition and memory. Takingas points of departure Charcot's images of hysteria and Freud's suggestion that the unconscious isstructured like a camera, Baer shows how the invention of photography and the emergence of themodern category of "trauma" intersect. Drawing on recent work in the field of trauma studies, heshows how experiences that are inherently split between their occurrence and their remembrance mightregister in and as photographic images.In light of contemporary discussions of recovered memoriesand the limits of representing such catastrophes as the Holocaust, Baer examines photographs ofartistic, medical, and historical subjects from the perspective of witnessing rather than merelyviewing. He shows how historicist approaches to photography paradoxically overlook precisely thosecataclysmic experiences that define our age. The photograph's apparent immunity to time is seen as acall for a future response--a response that is prompted by the ghostly afterlife of everyphotograph's subject. In a moving discussion of a rare collection of color slides taken by a Naziofficial in the Lodz ghetto, Baer makes us aware that it is the viewer's responsibility to accountfor the spectral evidence embedded in every image.

Ulrich Baer is Associate Professor of German and Comparative Literature at New York University.