Analyzing the works of the filmmaker Harun Farocki entails immersing oneself into the cinematic phenomenon to rather extraordinary depths. This is not only due to the constant inquiry into the status of the image that permeates all of his films—what institutions produce them, by means of what technical artifacts, how these images are distributed, what meanings they engender, etc.—but also to the fact that Harun Farocki’s ongoing research has been accompanied by a no less rigorous written production. This complementarity is undoubtedly helpful when one deals with said depths in questioning what is at stake when we see an image.

The aim of this paper is to traverse certain texts by Farocki as well as those films dealing with the issue of World War II, especially through the images generated in concentration camps. Thus, a small sample of his entire filmic œuvre is selected here so as to ponder its contribution to the study of the image and the way it operates, while considering the role of archive footage when tackling the issue of WWII and the concentration camps that produced such images.

This article was published in the issue 3 of Found Footage Magazine (2017)