--- On Fri, 9/5/08, Henry M. Taylor <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> Which are - in list members' opinions - both the most
> accessible and
> fertile texts on visual evidence, on film as a historical
> source /
> document? I taught a class way back in '93 on
> historical films, but
> since then, I guess, a lot must have happened in this line
> of inquiry.
I´m not sure whether this is misreading your question, but I simply assume it implies the possibility that historical events defy being caught on film. The most obvious source might be Danto - in particular war as a chain of events or almost parallel moments, that don´t add up to "a linear narrative" (simplified, in my own words).
In case you have an exhaustive library of art history books in reach, another suggestion would be Christian Boltanski´s works / books "Sanssouci" and "Detectives" - both being on first sight regular photo albums with real images (mostly bought at fleamarkets) depicting people during WW2.
Sanssouci deliberately shows the "nonevents": German soldiers surrounded by their families at home, while Detectives has portraits of war criminals and victims side by side, but no subscriptions, so the reader has to play the "detective", figuring out who´s who. I´m convinced your students will be able to come to fruitful questions and conclusions about what history is concerning interpretation, events, retrospection and so on.
1993, was your seminar focussed on Schindler´s List (and the Shoah / Lanzmann controversy)? Ironically, I´ve just looked it up, Forrest Gump (and debates about CGI, image manipulation) was to follow merely a year later.
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