Grief: The Biography of a Holocaust Photograph, by David Shneer
Journal: The English Historical Review
Year: 2022

The late David Shneer’s final monograph is an ambitious project: he focuses the entire book on a single iconic image and writes a ‘biography’ of that photograph, beginning with the events leading to its production and examining its continuing significance, from its first printing to the present day. The photograph at hand, simply titled ‘Grief’, depicts the aftermath of a Nazi mass killing following their occupation of Kerch, in Ukraine. ‘Biography’ summarises well Shneer’s approach to this imag