Georges Didi-Huberman's 'Écorces' Documents Auschwitz-Birkenau

Georges Didi-Huberman's book 'Écorces' (published by Éditions de Minuit) presents his photographic and textual meditation on the Auschwitz and Birkenau extermination camps. Armed with a modest camera, Didi-Huberman visited the sites to confront their physical reality, capturing images of birch bark, birds, barbed wire, and skies. The title refers to strips of bark he peeled from a birch tree at Birkenau, which he describes as 'skin' from the only witnesses to the horrors. The book includes his own photographs alongside reflections on the four 1944 photographs taken by a Sonderkommando member, which are the sole visual testimonies of a gassing operation in progress. Didi-Huberman's earlier analysis of these images in 'Images malgré tout' (2003) drew sharp criticism from the journal Les Temps modernes. 'Écorces' attempts to imagine the unimaginable, weaving in the tragic history of the author's own family.