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Nicholas Chare, Noah Shenker. Reframing Holocaust Testimony., The American Historical Review, Volume 122, Issue 5, December 2017, Pages 1574–1575, https://doi.org/10.1093/ahr/122.5.1574
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The art historian Meyer Schapiro describes a picture frame as “a finding and focussing device placed between the observer and the image” (“On Some Problems in the Semiotics of Visual Art: Field and Vehicle in Image-Signs,” Simiolus: Netherlands Quarterly for the History of Art 6, no. 1 [1972–1973]: 11). Schapiro draws attention to how the frame mediates our experience of the visual, guiding our perceptions. In Reframing Holocaust Testimony, Noah Shenker explores the interposing roles of various forms of framing (including cataloguing practices, interview techniques, and video camera angles and shots) within the context of Holocaust video testimonies. In this well-researched and very welcome monograph, Shenker compares and contrasts three U.S.-based institutions that house archival projects dedicated to recording and indexing audiovisual Holocaust testimonies: the Fortunoff Archive at Yale University, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) in Washington, D.C., and the USC Shoah Foundation in Los Angeles. Differing institutional conceptions of the purpose and nature of video testimony intersect with interview formats to orchestrate witness accounts.