In 1979, Troy Brauntuch appropriated a 1932 photograph of Adolf Hitler asleep in the back of his Mercedes taken by his official photograph Heinrich Hoffmann. Brauntuch’s series of artworks spun around this image went on show at the Kitchen in Chelsea, New York, and brought into question the representation of evil, photography’s limits, and the function of context in pictures. A pioneering example of post-modernism, Brauntuch’s work takes on a renewed resonance as we consider the role of history in art.
Altair Brandon-Salmon is a PhD candidate in Art History at Stanford University, writing a dissertation on ruins in London during and after the Second World War. His article on Cecil Beaton’s wartime photography is in the September 2022 issue of Art History.
Organised by Professor David Peters Corbett (The Courtauld).
The Centre for American Art is supported by the Terra Foundation for American Art
