Images of the World and the Inscription of War

The film is built as an essay. Its subject is how images get read. Harun Farocki looks at a series of examples. At the centre of them are photographs taken from the air. The photographs were taken in 1944. American aircraft were bombing an industrial plant in Germany. The cameras recorded the surrounding ground as well. The frames sat untouched for years. Decades later the photographs were examined again. American intelligence did the examining. Only then was it seen that Auschwitz is in the frames. The camp was inside the photograph and nobody had looked. Farocki goes after that gap. The question is what a person wants to see and does not want to see. Harun Farocki made the seventy five minute German film, finished in 1991.