CAMERA OBSCURA

THE ELEPHANT IN THE DARKROOM

An accidental by-product of the near-simultaneous arrival of the first itinerant photographers and the so-called Jewish Enlightenment in the Pale of Settlement during the middle of the 19th century, the thoroughly ubiquitous and equally unique phenomenon that was Lithuanian Jewish photographic culture was unquestionably one of the former civilisation’s greatest secular achievements. Before its swift and almost total destruction between March 23, 1939 and January 28, 1945, Lithuanian Jewish photographers had been responsible for the creation of approximately 10 million photographs, of which an estimated eight million were completely destroyed or otherwise displaced to destinations still mostly unknown. Produced with assistance from the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, the EVZ Foundation and the German Federal Ministry of Finance, The Elephant in the Darkroom is an unprecedented provenance research project whose primary purpose is to investigate and make publicly available all surviving information concerning the systematic looting, expropriation and wholesale destruction of these images, while simultaneously uncovering the miscellaneous fates of the Lithuanian Jewish men and women who made them. Please note that the results of the first period of research are still in the process of being written, and are expected to be uploaded to the Camera Obscura website in the form of 10 extensive case studies by the beginning of November 2025.