Remains, 2004
Remains explores three former concentration camp sites in Germany. Several million people visit these sites every year, perhaps feeling the need to be physically present at these places, that some greater understanding, not of what happened, but of the fact of it, is possible through this physical experience of place. The book is in three sections, and each one opens with a list of words and a brief history of the camp. Images from the US Holocaust Memorial Museum Photographic Archive depicting the camps at the time of liberation are layered behind my contemporary images. This positioning speaks visually to the process by which individual experiences become obscured as official histories dominate the site. We know the stories and have seen Hollywood’s version of the Holocaust, but the real stories are slipping away, sliding under the surface, as survivors dwindle and the metanarratives of history and ‘memorialization’ take over. Images are deliberately cropped and placed into the gutter to express loss and the anonymity of those whose names we do not know. What should be preserved and what destroyed? What should be remembered and what forgotten? What is the task of interpretation and who should be its author?”
Ink jet print on rag paper and laser print on vellum, case binding,80 pages. Visual Studies Workshop Press.