The representation of Francesc Boix and other Spanish Republicans in the graphic narrative El fotógrafo de Mauthausen (2018) by Rubio, Colombo and Landa

This talk will focus on the representation of Francesc/ Francisco Boix—the Catalan
photographer and Spanish Republican who survived the horrors of the Mauthausen
concentration camp and later testified with photographic evidence at the Nuremberg trials—in the historical graphic narrative, El fotógrafo de Mauthausen (2018) by Salva Rubio, Pedro J. Colombo and Aintzane Landa. Drawing on Marianne Hirsch’s concept of ‘affiliative postmemory’, the analysis will discuss how the author and artists navigate ethical and aesthetic issues when representing something as inconceivable as the Holocaust. Their text adds to the burgeoning genre of historical graphic narrative in Spain, which seeks to ‘recover
and visualize forgotten or untold stories from the Spanish Civil War from a leftist perspective’ (Amago and Marr 2019). It also expands the growing corpus of works that represent the photographer’s short life, including a documentary (Llorenç Soler 2000), a play (Laila Ripoll and Mariano Llorente 2014), a grief novel (Lea Vélez 2014), and a film (Mar Targarona 2018). Finally, the comic acknowledges and pays homage to the Spanish Republican deportees or ‘unacknowledged ghosts’ (Sara J. Brenneis 2019) who were left to their fate in Nazi
concentration camps.