AUSTRIAN DESIGNER TAKES NUDE PHOTOS AT DEATH CAMP

"Extraordinary bad taste" - Nazi camp site in nude photos (Juralo)
Accusations of "extraordinary bad taste" were levelled Sunday after details emerged of an Austrian designer snapping nude photos at a former Nazi concentration camp. Gudrun Geiblinger, an up-and-coming poster designer, used the memorial site at the former Mauthausen death camp as backdrop for nude photos of herself, the news magazine Profil wrote in its latest edition.

The photos, shot in the late 1990s, show Geiblinger naked, wearing only white stockings and high heels, in sensual poses in front of a camp watchtower and hugging a sculpture depicting a dying soldier.

Profil quoted Geiblinger, among whose clients are the Austrian army, Siemens and the Austrian Federal Railways, as saying the photos were an "artistic thought experiment. "

She justified the photoshoot by saying she worked on a project at an art school, doing a poster series for Amnesty International and the photos were used for "brainstorming. " Prison walls, barbed wire and a naked woman - those images were intended to "provoke", she said

"By coincidence" she discovered Mauthausen had what she needed. "I did not want Mauthausen as such, what I needed was a prison," Geiblinger said. However, the provocative project was never realized.

Shooting the photos had been easy, she added. Naked beneath her coat, she simply shed it when necessary and had her photographer snap the pictures.