Although the photographs in Art Spiegelman's graphic memoir Maus have attracted an overwhelming amount of scholarly attention, this chapter shows that observing the photographic medium in the visual narrative through another graphic device -- the mask--reveals a novel vantage point that might otherwise have been obscured. This chapter claims that photographs can be viewed as masks of past events, as they create the sense that we can visually access what may otherwise have remained unrecorded. In this chapter I engage with the photographs integrated in Maus to argue that their incorporation in the visual narrative probes the intrinsic documentary quality of Holocaust photography and questions our reliance on photography's evidentiary quality.

To read the full chapter please email me at: lifuter@gmail.com

Suggested citation:

Futerman, Liza. “Of Mice and Masks: Photography as Masking in Art Spiegelman’s Maus: A Survivor’s Tale.” The Comics of Art Spiegelman [edited volume]; Editors: Georgiana Banita (University of Bamberg, Germany) and Lee Konstantinou (University of Maryland, College Park). University of Mississippi Press. (2023).