Taking Pictures

Abstract

During World War II, many of Florence's best-known artworks, including items from the Uffizi Gallery and the Pitti Palace, were seized by German forces. Drawing on a little-known archive created by officials in the Allied Military Government's Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives section and now housed in the Deane Keller Papers at Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library, this article examines photographs that depict the absence, rediscovery, and restoration of Florence's art treasures between 1944 and 1945. The photographs were taken by a soldier in the U.S. Army, Charles Bernholz, and constitute an important record of these events. Visual analysis of these photographs also yields insights about larger issues of collecting, including the symbolic role of acknowledged masterworks that motivates both preservation and appropriation. These images evoke affinities between the cultural heritage photographed and the medium of photography itself — both provide an illusory but compelling sense of proximity to the past.