Background information
"On May 10, 1933, National Socialist students burned some 30,000 books on the former Opernplatz in the middle of Berlin: political literature, scientific books, novels and poems, even children's books. The list of authors includes many well-known names - among them Magnus Hirschfeld, Kurt Hiller and Else Lasker-Schüler - but also those who have since disappeared from cultural memory. Annette KELM's photographs of these books follow a decidedly matter-of-fact aesthetic, showing the books individually as flat objects, photographed frontally, against a neutral background. This conceptual approach, the high image sharpness and the neutral light give the covers a presence that goes far beyond the documentary.
There is no archive of ostracized books photographed here. The photographer has worked with various private and public collections. Nor is it a matter of completeness. Rather, her images are reduced and at the same time formalized compositions in which seeing and reading coincide in the sense of assigning meaning. In the 2019/20 series 'The Books', the view of the historical artifacts is objective, charging what we see with a meaning that also resides in our knowledge of them. These are abstractions in which something disappears and is added elsewhere as a visual surplus. The precise photographic view of the book and its design is thus representative of the authors who were persecuted at the time and makes us think equally about the possibilities of representing history and coming to terms with the Nazi era, when objects are becoming increasingly important for memory because of the disappearance of contemporary witnesses." (© Magnus-hirschfeld.de)
Content
The photo volume 'Die Bücher' (The books) by Annette KELM shows the books ostracized by the National Socialists on individual pages and in color. In the anhnag further detil information about the book titles, like author:in, designer:in, publisher, are listed.