Only the Forgotten…, 2013
Inheriting Loss (2013)
I made this photograph in 2013 combining a model’s hand with words from a Jewish tombstone in Berlin. The words mean “Only someone forgotten is dead.” The photo and these accompanying words summarize the essence of what this project means to me.
“My parents, like many survivors, never talked about the 19 members of their immediate families who were murdered in Nazi Germany. As someone from the next generation, I feel strongly that those relatives who experienced such profound evil should not simply vanish unknown and unremembered. The first deaths sadly cannot be reversed. But the second deaths can be undone by learning the names of my relatives, uncovering something about their lives, and discovering what happened to them. My goal is to restore the Rosenthal family’s lost history.”
River Shadows II, 2015
River Shadows III, 2015
The next summer in VT, when a friend and I couldn’t photograph as planned, we worked at a river nearby. The water was too cold to sit in, so my model stood in the shallow, swiftly moving waters, trees reflecting on the surface, and I photographed her shadow caught on the sandy bottom.
River Shadows IV, 2015
River Shadows V, 2015
When I took my first pictures, I was stunned. The confluence of elements created something I couldn’t have imagined. It was as if I had entered another dimension where the spirits of my relatives joined me and conventional photography no longer existed. My model, a 40-year-old woman morphed into many people. You would expect her to look like the young woman who starts this series. But in other images, she appears to be an old man or old woman, or even a young girl. Each figure was caught in an apocalyptic space, totally alone. I present the images in groupings, open-faced like testimony.
River Shadows VI, 2015
River Shadows IX, 2015
I later wrote these words about my River Shadow Series:
They’d been there all along waiting, like the secrets in the family that I grew up with. When I found them, they presented themselves effortlessly, craving remembrance. They materialized with every click of the shutter.
Someone needed to look into the darkness and unravel the mystery. I believe I became the designated mourner in my family, born to the task on May 7, 1945, the same day my German Jewish parents learned with the rest of the world that the war in Europe was finally over and that a pact would be signed the next day.