The Portraitist is a 2005 Polish television documentary film about the life and work of Wilhelm Brasse, the famous "photographer of Auschwitz", made for TVP1, Poland, which first aired in its "Proud to Present" series on January 1, 2006.

[2] In August 1940, when he was 23, after fleeing the Nazi occupation of Żywiec, his home town in southern Poland, Wilhelm Brasse was captured at the Polish-Hungarian border and deported to KL Auschwitz-Birkenau, as prisoner number 3444.

[14] The Germans keen on documenting the industrial nature of murder did not possess the knowledge and skills of photo lab technicians, and relegated the work to Erkennungsdienst prisoners like Brasse, "the portraitist" of Auschwitz.

[15] In reviewing the Contact 2008 screening, Fran Schechter observes that "Director Ireneusz Dobrowolski mixes the recollections of the now elderly survivor [Wilhelm Brasse] with a gallery of mug shots and SS portraits and wartime film footage of ghettos and concentration camps."

Schechter notes: "Any Holocaust testimony has an impact", but adds: "this film could have delved deeper into the question of why the Nazis made photographs and other documentation of people they considered expendable", and is left wondering: "Were they proud of their savage efficiency, or using photography to normalize their actions?