Imageless Captions

The Holocaust is a tragic event that is part of almost every nation's history in one way or another. Every history course that I have ever taken has somehow in some way related back to the Holocaust. In these history classes, we are taught a lot about the concentration camps and what led up to it and the horrors that occurred during it. Each and every time, it is always the pictures that stay with you the longest. These images of mass graves and starved humans and hundreds of other horrifying acts were documented through photography and become engraved in your mind once you have seen them once. However, because these images almost knock the wind out of you, there is not always a lot of attention given to who it actually is in those images and where they really are. You could show me 15 of the most common Holocaust images and I could probably tell you why that picture was significant and something that was related to the lesson we learned the first day that I saw it, however I could not for the life of me tell you who that person actually was, or where they are. In Robert Fitterman's book Holocaust Museum he tests the associations that people make with the Holocaust when the emotional images are removed and all that is left is the stark captions. Fitterman takes an event that is so remembered by its images and refocuses it on to the actual who and where.

The purpose of a caption is to put a picture into context. By separating the caption and the image Fitterman recontextualizes the captions and brings a whole new meaning to the words. In one sense he tests how well the words actually depict what is in the image. But, he also does much more than that. He is testing the association that we as the audience make with those words we read. It starts with the Table of Contents is: “Propaganda, Family Photographs, Boycotts, Burning of Books, The Science of Race, Gypsies, Deportation, Concentration Camps, Uniforms, Shoes, Jewelry, Hair, Zyklon B Canisters, Gas Chambers, Mass Graves, American Soldiers, and Liberation (Fitterman).”  Each word you read you can automatically picture a horrific image that is associated with it which gives it so much more meaning. Then, the contents of each chapter are simply captions with no image separated by a space. Below is an excerpt from the chapter “Uniforms.” 

"(Fitterman)" "                                                                                                                                             (USHMM)"

[photograph #97186] [photograph #59705] [photograph #24793] [photograph #49413] [photograph #64448] [photograph #42468] [photograph #27417] [photograph #67752] [photograph #59717] [photograph #49389] [photograph #59709]
 
The simplicity of the page adds focus to the actual words that are written. One of the coolest parts about Fitterman’s work is how “the referent — the photography — is missing. There’s nowhere for the eyes to wander. No visual details, no foreground or background, only the hard surface of the text…it is left to the imagination or whatever knowledge the reader may have (Serup).” By taking out the faces, the reader is forced to think about the things that could make up the subject of the image. Things like names on places and on ethnical, national, and cultural affiliations, family names become so much more important to the audience in order to piece an image together rather than being able to just look at the picture and see it all. This keeps the details alive in a whole new way. If the reader wants to know more, then they have to go look up what is missing which keeps the Holocaust forever in the present. As seen above, when the image and caption are put back together, the eye is immediately drawn to the image rather than the caption. The immediate reaction is a feeling. Regardless of what the feeling is, one becomes associated with the image. However, when the words from Fitterman's book are read, there is much less immediate feeling associated. This allows the audience to perceive and absorb the information in a new way.

Fitterman recontextualizes the captions which makes the work conceptual. He may not be an artist like Kazimir Malevich who continues to paint over the same canvas creating non-replicable streaks in each underlying layer (kazimir-malevich.org) or an author like M. NourbeSe Philip who takes the words from a historical court case and transforms them into a greater meaning by projecting them across pages and over laying them to create new meanings (NourbeSe Philip), but the goal is still the same; to make the audience think. When Malevich ends his layers and layers of work with just a black canvas, he is eliminating the context which shows the audience where his textures underneath came from. Philip shredded the words of the court case and put them back together so no matter how the original court case was written, the way that Zong! is read is with more emotion and torment than the original text. Similarly, by stripping the captions of their images, Fitterman removes the context of the entire basis which the Holocaust is taught. However, unlike Zong!, Fitterman takes the emotion out, rather than adding it in. This kind of recontextualization makes you consider what other pairings in art and literature could be separated but still be able to stand on their own and make the audience think in a new way.

Fitterman, Robert. Holocaust Museum. Veer Publication, 2011. Print.

kazimir-malevich.org. "Black Square."  2015. Web.
Memorial, U. S. H. M. "Shmuel Shalkovsky poses between his parents in his Hashomer Hatzair uniform.". from http://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/pa1143945.

NourbeSe Philip, M. . Zong! : Wesleyan Poetry Series, 2011. Print.

Serup, Martin Glaz. "Captions without Images."  2015. Web.