Hitler Asleep in the Mercedes.

Troy Brauntuch's solo show at the Kitchen in New York in 1979 focused on an appropriated image of a sleeping Hitler being driven through the open countryside in his Mercedes. Brauntuch, part of the Pictures generation of artists, used the photograph to create a postmodern fascist aesthetic, informed by the renewed cultural relevance of Nazi imagery in 1970s New York. The original image had been taken in 1932 by Hitler's personal photographer, Heinrich Hoffmann, and its transmission from Nazi photobooks to Albert Speer's memoir Inside the Third Reich and, finally, to Brauntuch's exhibition, shows how representations of Hitler shifted even with the same image. By analyzing the history of the photograph through a Barthian lens, the back of the Hitler's head will emerge as a site of obtuseness, capable of transcending the distance imposed by the past and showing the continued influence of fascist imagery. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]