the visible part. Photographs of Mauthausen Concentration Camp

There are a large number photographs of Mauthausen concentration camp and its satellite camps. Some have become icons, but most remain unknown, not least because they are dispersed throughout the world. For the first time, the exhibition “the visible part” brings together an extensive collection of photos, some of them hitherto unseen, from Austria, the Czech Republic, France, Spain and the USA. This catalogue contains a representative selection and shows pictures covering the history of the camp from its establishment to the liberation and beyond.

The collection should not be taken lightly. The numerous photos dating from before the liberation of Mauthausen come from the SS alone. Many of them show a deceptively clean picture of the concentration camp and need to be regarded with a very critical eye. Others openly document the humiliation, hunger and death of the inmates or reflect the racism of the SS. Shortly before they fled the camp, the SS attempted to systematically destroy compromising photographs, but a group of inmates managed to save hundreds of negatives, risking their lives in doing so.

The liberation in May 1945 marked a turning point in the photographic documentation: various photographers, including liberated inmates, journalists and American soldiers, provided unadulterated visual testimony to the atrocities. The photographs were designed to show to the world the consequences of the Nazi ideology and at the same time to provide proof of the crimes that had been committed in the camps. But they also document the determination of the survivors as they gradually regained the identity that had been stolen from them.

The book is available in bookstores and on the website of new academic press.