Occam’s Razor tells me that for any given problem the simplest explanation is the one to pick. So I would have to assume that what my grandfather took part in and witnessed is very much along the lines of what has just been published as Das Auge des Krieges [The Eye of War] by Buchkunst Berlin. The photographs in the book were taken by a certain Dieter Keller, a man from a privileged background who in some capacity spent the majority of his life in the world of art.
“Othering of the loser of a war is important for collective consciousness and acts as a bulwark against the tide of human sympathy in the matters of inhumane consequence”
There are a number of different ways to approach writing about photograph
Dieter Keller was a Nazi employed in the Wehrmacht in the early 40’s. He participated or observed the systematic killing and torture of villagers on the Eastern Front of the war. Where is gets complicated is that he made beautiful photographic images surrounding the event that remind one of the Bauhaus movement, modernist masterpieces of the medium and later Tarkovsky-like interludes of solemn and questioning studies of the environment in which he found himself. He was, by official Nazi decree not supposed to have made these records. And yet….we have these records in Das Auge Des Krieges (Buchkunst Berlin).
