It Simply Was questions the reliability of the tourist gaze in constructing knowledge and understanding of the holocaust through the creation and analysis of six composites made from tourist photographs taken at six different holocaust sites. The individual images used in each of these composites were all downloaded from the popular photo-sharing site Flickr.
If the tourist gaze is created by the relationship between the physical landscape of a holocaust site and the psychological landscape of those that now run the site, then the photographic habits of tourists at those sites can provide insight into the tourist gaze, particularly if many individual visitors create the same or similar photographs during their visit. Each site selected has a direct connection to the holocaust, the exception being the Monument to the Murdered Jews of Europe in Berlin, selected because it is reunified Germany's official state-sponsored memorial to the Jewish victims of the holocaust.
Research over the last twenty years suggests that the lines between holocaust victim, perpetrator and collaborator are being blurred or should be completely redrawn. At least one Historian has argued that the holocaust was a European project and was only so far reaching because of the support of local regimes. Such revelations challenge the core beliefs of those nations involved and therefore the interpretation that currently exists in these sites. Although these nations are aware of their own role in the holocaust some will seek to deflect their own culpability through the interpretation they construct at these sites.
However, as It Simply Was indicates, tourists often focus on monuments (whether they be officially sanctioned or not) and this should be seen as a mark of respect, an aspiration to better understand the events of the holocaust by physically visiting these sites. The act of photographing is a moment of contemplation, part of the ongoing grieving process in understanding the horrors of the holocaust.
