The uncanny return : documenting place in post-war German photography

Abstract:
As part of a larger research project, this paper was originally written in the context of the
“Framing Time and Place: Repeats and Returns in Photography” conference held at the University
of Plymouth in April 2009. This research investigated how contemporary German
photography relates to, or contextualizes, a history of place on the periphery of understanding.
In my research on post-war German photography of place, I argue that photographs of
the urban landscape reveal a multiplicity of histories and memories that challenge perceptions
of knowing and seeing. I argue that such images indicate and speak about events, memories
and histories that form part of the fractured space that sits outside of, or adjacent to, the
events that they reference. In this paper, the literary Denkbild, as practised by Walter Benjamin,
Siegfried Kracauer and others, is used as a means by which to analyse both photography
and re-photography of place in the context of post-war urban landscape.