and recent photographs was a natural for Jeffrey Wolin (pictured), an IU Bloomington fine arts professor. He had done something like that before, and here was a part of history begging to be recorded in this way.
Related Link: Art Institute of Chicago
"When I came in in the evening (at the concentration camp) I used to unroll them and look at them and say, 'My goodness, I am not from stone. I am from people. I am from a family.'"
-- Jadzia Strykowska, born in Poland and imprisoned at Bergen Belsen
By Susan Voelkel
Many of the victims of the Holocaust who were forced into concentration camps during World War II managed to take with them a few photographs, usually pictures of their family. These became excruciatingly important to them during their internment, and now for many survivors, are virtually the only visible proof of their own early lives and their relatives.
Today survivors still treasure these old, often scuffed photographs, which link them to the past and to their heritage. Looking at the photographs sometimes helps the survivors penetrate self-imposed veils which obscure the hurt of their memories.
A project of incorporating these pictures with biographical statements and recent photographs was a natural for Jeffrey Wolin (pictured), an IU Bloomington fine arts professor. He had done something like that before, and here was a part of history begging to be recorded in this way.
The idea for Wolin's Holocaust project had its genesis in 1980 when the Department of Jewish Studies brought in several Holocaust survivors including Eli Wiesel (who later won a Nobel Prize), and Wolin heard their autobiographical stories.
A photographer whose work has earned him a Guggenheim fellowship, Wolin values pictures as part of the record of life. Realizing that the Holocaust survivors are dwindling in numbers as they age and die, he set out to preserve some of the stories before the survivors are all gone.
He appreciated the vocalization of the memories. "I wanted to hear them speak, not just to record their words, but to hear their European accents,"
he said. He also wanted to take their pictures as they are now. Wolin began a project of interviewing and photographing survivors and then actually hand printing their words on the photographs themselves, creating "phototexts."
In talking to the survivors he became disturbingly aware of their pain and how it has burned itself into their minds in traumatic ways. He realized that time and shock shapes what they remember, and how some events, such as the first day in a concentration camp, are etched on the memory forever -- down to the most minute detail -- while other important particulars cannot be recalled. He is also aware of how these memories influence and intrude on life today for the survivors.
The survivors themselves understand that their numbers are ebbing, and many feel an urgent need to be sure that the world does not forget the Holocaust and does not cease in efforts to prevent such a catastrophe again.
The Art Institute of Chicago exhibit of Wolin's works includes phototext portraits of survivors and photographs which the survivors have so carefully protected throughout their lives.
The exhibit will go to New York City in the spring and later to Minneapolis.
Wolin's Holocaust pictures are being published in a book, Written in Memory: Portraits of the Holocaust, which is being published by Chronicle Books.
Wolin coauthored the 1985 book Stone Country (about Indiana limestone) with Scott R. Sanders, IUB Distinguishted Professor of English. He has also produced an award-winning series of photographs of residents in public housing in Bloomington
Wolin is now working with his eight-year-old son on a project with family pictures. The son is doing the writing. Wolin also has returned to a project photographing Vietnam veterans which he started several years ago.
Wolin's exhibit continues at the Art Institute of Chicago until Dec. 1.
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