[Leica] Strategic area bombing of Germany - Operation Gomorrah - photographs

[Tim Atherton <tim@KairosPhoto.com>]

I have just been reading W.G. Sebalds essays "On the Natural History of
Destruction" about the Allied strategic area-bombing campaign undertaken in
order to destroy German cities during WWII - in part known as Operation
Gomorrah. During the campaign, from 1942 onwards to the end of the war 131
German towns and cities were targeted, with 600,000 German civilian dead and
seven and a half million left homeless and displaced.

The devastation and impact were immense. What Sebald examines is the almost
complete lack (with only very few exceptions) of any kind of serious, in
depth contemporaneous writing (fiction or non-fiction) within Germany about
these events, either from during the period 1942-45 or in the immediate
psot-war period. He bleieved that given the astonishing scope of the
devestation there was in fact a sort of collective denial within Germany
about the experience, and ominous silence that has left a large gap in the
cultural memory.

My question is this: is anyone aware of any in depth photogrpahic work
examining and or recording/documenting this overwhelmingly massive
destruction and loss of civilian life - especially German work (I imagine
there is a certain amount of post-war allied photography, as there is a
small amount of writing on the subject).

Sebald goes on to argue that the experience of these events obviously had a
huge effect on the collective German post-war psyche - but the overwhelming
silence about the events has had an equally profound effect. (These city
ruins lasted for some good period of time after the war, despite
reconstruction.)

I found it intriguing reading what he has to say about the written record
(or lack thereof) and that naturally led me to think about the photographic
record.

tim a

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