The inconceivability of the Holocaust

• Photographer
  Natalie Truchsess
• Technical Info
  1/30 ; F/18 ; Iso 200 ; Olympus E-m5 Mark Ii, Icm Technic (intentional Camera Movement)
• Photo Date
  08.08.2023

In my series I examine the genius loci of the "Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe" in Berlin. The large field with its 2711 dark gray concrete blocks lets me imagine the dimension of the mass murder of 6 million Jewish people in its brutal totality. That anti-Semitic propaganda led to such a state-organized crime is inconceivable to me. The ice-cold systematics in planning and execution and the brutal cruelty of the executors are frightening. The caused sorrow is infinite. It is a deceptive feeling that there can be no more Jewish progroms today because anti-Semitism is spreading again.

I learned my photographic craft from the photographer and filmmaker Valentin Schwab. After a specialized internship in film and studio production at Bayerischer Rundfunk in 1988, I worked for several years as a camera assistant in both analog and electronic recording. Over the last years I increasingly have abstracted my visual language. In my current work, I use abstract photographs to explore the representation of the subliminal, the ineffable, and the ephemeral.