As a historian-type I’m generally interested in how people respond to events and to past events. I do a lot of historiography, so I spend a lot of time thinking about how people record the past; why and how they document things.
The trip to Poland included a visit to Auschwitz-Birkenau, and, after a certain amount of consideration, I decided that I would take photographs of the site. I didn’t want to take snapshots of “So-and-so at Auschwitz” or randomly shoot everything I saw. I wanted to try and capture something of the mood and atmosphere as I saw it, as well as writing about it (I tend to journal a lot when I travel). But I was a little worried I’d look odd taking photographs at a holocaust sight: weird, morbid, inconsiderate, or something, but I figured I could live with that. However, it turned out that I (and Gwynaeth) appeared to be in the minority in thinking about the way we wanted to take photos. The “rules” for the Auschwitz site allows you to take photographs outside, but not inside the buildings and exhibitions, and we kept to this. Even if the rule hadn’t existed, I don’t think we would have wanted to take photos inside the exhibitions.
There were (inevitably) a lot of tour groups visiting the site, which caused certain "traffic" problems in the exhibitions that are set up within the barracks at the Auschwitz I site (the ‘museum’ is situated at Auschwitz I, whilst Auschwitz-Birkenau has been left as-is for you to explore on one’s own), and a lot of people on these tours were taking photos inside the exhibition, flashes going off all around, mobile phones waving in the air. It was odd, and actually a little irritating. We were left wondering why people wanted these photos, which didn’t seem to be being composed with much care or consideration, and whether they were just taking them because the commonness of digital photography meant that they could. I’m not trying to say that there’s something inherently ‘less thoughtful’ about digital photography (after all, I was there with my digital), or that my photography is better than theirs because I went all intellectual on it, but I think there may be something in the immediacy of digital, and in the fact that you can take large numbers of photos without necessarily having the expense of printing them all in order to view them that may encourage people to take large numbers of photographs in this way. I have no conclusions to offer, but it interested me, as did the fact that the tour guides made no effort to prevent their groups from ‘breaking the rules’ and taking photos inside the exhitions.
Anyway, this was taken at the Auschwitz II Birkenau camp – the train tracks inside the camp, leading up to the infamous tower and arch. It’s very hard to take any photos at both sites without including people in your composition. These guys were there with a video camera and a rather hefty tripod, filming, and yet seemingly unaware that although a lot of people had waited for them to finish shooting at the spot from which this was taken as they walked back along the train tracks.
