Skirball Museum Cincinnati in partnership with The Center for Holocaust and Humanity Education
12 Nazi Concentration Camps: Photographs by James Friedman
Skirball Museum of Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in partnership with The Center for Holocaust and Humanity Education presents 12 Nazi Concentration Camps: Photographs by James Friedman. In 1981 and 1983, Columbus, Ohio, photographer James Friedman traveled to Europe to photograph twelve Nazi concentration camps in Austria, Belgium, Czechoslovakia, France, Germany, and Poland. At the time of his visits, there was nothing left in many of the camps, except a field, memorial sculpture, or fabricated barracks to replace the ones that had disappeared. In other camps, the effects of tourism had left their mark.
Friedman’s full-color, large format photographs make no attempt to travel back in time. Rather, they are unsettling and startling, juxtaposing hallowed ground with concession stands, maintenance workers, and tourists. These photographs are in direct contrast to the black and white images we have come to associate with the photographic archive of the Nazi concentration camps. And yet, many of the photographs that were taken when the camps were liberated have inspired and informed Friedman’s body of work. It is for this reason that the exhibition includes documentary photographs from a variety of collections coupled with Friedman’s commentary on his thought process in creating these haunting and provocative images.
The Center for Holocaust and Humanity Education’s complementary exhibition Through Their Lens: Photo Reflections on the Holocaust runs Nov 9, 2016–Jan 27, 2017 at 8401 Montgomery Rd.