tiger's leap 1
tiger's leap 2
fragments of memory, remembrance and resistance
two books, hand bound, 60x40 cm, 2009
„History is the subject of a structure whose site is not homogenous, empty time, but time filled by the presence of the now. … Fashion has the flair for the topical, no matter where it stirs in the thickest of long ago; it is a tiger's leap into the past. This jump, however, takes place in an arena where the ruling class give the commands. The same leap in the open air of history is the dialectical one, which is how Marx understood the revolution“ (Walter Benjamin, on the concept of history)
I met Shoa survivors in their daily lives in Israel and in interview sessions they told me about their experiences with the loss of relatives, the national-socialistic death machinery, persecution, displacement, escape, forced labour, hunger, humiliation and the contingency of their survival. The photo and interview project combines two large format books: tiger's leap 1 comprises the photographic portraits and interview excerpts of the interviewed Shoa survivors and tiger's leap 2 is dealing with contemporary resistance against Neonazis and racism. Alongside the individual stories of prosecution there is an emphasis on questions of how each one is dealing with memory and in which ways they remember. How significant the memories are in daily life, if there is even a possibility of categorizing ones own memory and which role suppression plays.
For the second part of the book I also documented rallies of Israeli, Palestinian and international activists against the wall and the current Israeli occupation politics. Conversations with Holocaust witnesses and the inauguration of a monument for the survivors in Mittenwald, Bavaria. Commemorative events to remember the survivors of the death machinery of the National Socialists and in memory of the millions of victims of the National Socialism. In my visual study I was especially interested in ambivalences and emancipative ways of remembering.
thanks to: Zwi Katz, Ester Katz, Dita Sperling, Estera Albert, Suzy Kitron, Chaim Melech, Stefan Herschkowitz, Lucia Jakov
and the historian Moshe Zuckermann for the interview
