On the Impossibility of Believing in the Documentary: Dariusz Jabłoński’s “Photographer”

Tomasz Łysak

Abstract

Colour slides of the Łódź Ghetto were found in Vienna in 1987. They were taken by Walter Genewein, the Austrian chief accountant of the Ghetto. In 1998, Dariusz Jabłoński made use of the story of Genewein and his slides to shoot the documentary film Photographer. Jabłoński juxtaposed two realities: the world of a smoothly operating enterprise portrayed by the Austrian and the reality recalled by Arnold Mostowicz, the Jew and one of the few Ghetto survivors. As Genewein and Mostowicz tell two different stories their views have to differ as well. Hence, Mostowicz’s disagreement with the reality documented by Genewein and the belief that it is a distorted picture which by no means corresponds with the remembrance of the place. Łysak tries to unravel the mystery of the points of view and understand the truth of the two sides. He also tries to take a closer look at the notion of a “documentary” and explore its possibilities as an objective record of reality. Łysak tries to analyse clichés of the pictures connected with the remembrance of the Holocaust (e.g., image of the gate of the Auschwitz camp with the inscription Arbeit macht frei) and the mechanisms governing a destruction of the clichés and habits (colour used in the portrayal of the Holocaust on the slides taken by Genewein). [originally published in Polish in Kwartalnik Filmowy 2003, no. 43, pp. 66-76]