The Luxury of Distance (2008 - 2010)
“Camera got them images, camera got them all. Nothing’s shocking.” ~ Jane’s Addiction, 1988
My obsession with picturing the unseen led to an exploration of how historical trauma is memorialized and preserved using photographic documentation. Because of the overwhelming stock of pictures used to describe the liberation of the Concentration Camps from the time of the Third Reich, one has a specific imagistic reference whenever the word Holocaust is uttered. However, these pictures cannot adequately conjure the depicted experience of this past – they stand as points of reference. Adorno once argued that “To write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric”. This formulation properly emphasizes that whenever the Holocaust is aestheticized, the object in question diminishes the victim’s experience. In “The Luxury of Distance” I use the traditional photographic language of beauty in nature combined with descriptions of geographical trauma – a kind of poetry in reverse.
All images approximately 30" x 40" unless otherwise noted.
