Auschwitz-Birkenau pt.1
In the month of May, I’ve finally been able to admit something to myself. I’m not really a writer. If I were, I’d be writing much more often. I would probably be writing daily. I’d be thinking about writing before ever setting out to write, and most days right now, I don’t even consider putting pen to paper. So, as a newly self-described non-writer, I think what I’m coming to terms with is the difference between wanting to do something and actually doing it, or wanting to be something and actually being it. By calling myself a non-writer, I’m not utterly eliminating the possibility of being one in the future. I’m just admitting what’s currently true. I like a good act of self-refusal. And I refuse to craft a false identity (or at least an overblown one). Often, before I even begin to handwrite, I’m peeved by my lack of vocabulary, I’m peeved by my lack of intention, and I stall before the blank page. Journaling, diary-keeping, list-making—the ways most of us capture our thoughts and lives—have felt overly tedious to me. Boring, too. I’m bored not only by what I have to say but by how I’m saying it. I’ve been honest in previous series about my hesitations regarding sharing on this site. So let me go ahead and add that I’m embarrassed to be typing away on a computer during a season of my life which has been so deprived of material writing. It feels as though I haven’t earned the right to construct sentences on my glowing laptop screen, like I’m cheating the natural order. The really real world of writing is tangible, right? Ink on paper?!
I’m not sure how far to follow that meta question or how else to describe the position I find myself in. What I should say, what ensures all of this blabber is relevant, is that my current attitude towards writing (or not writing for that matter) makes this two-part series especially intimidating. Should I really share photographs of the most notorious concentration/extermination camp established by Nazi Germany and make some brief comments about it when I’m feeling a loss for words generally? I mean, of the topics most challenging to find the right words for, the Holocaust has to top the list. I think it’s ok for me to acknowledge this and to press forwards anyways. If I put these photos aside until the day I feel most prepared to publish them or talk about them, I risk never actually doing so. Which would be ok if I felt that taking pictures at the camp was an appropriate, individualistic act of remembering, if I felt that the photos were for me. But it wasn’t. And they aren’t.
To give myself some space and consider how I do want to supplement these images, I’m sharing a few slightly abstract ones first. I describe them that way because, in truth, I suffered a major mishap with this roll. At some point during the days before my visit to Auschwitz, I dropped my camera and the rim of the metal lens noticeably bent in (which I believe cast dark shadows on the right side of the frame?). And at some point during the days after my visit to Auschwitz, I accidentally popped the back panel open (causing light leaks on a number of the slides). What I love about film is that there is no true trouble-shooting, no way to fix mess-ups except after the fact—if that. I went in and edited my favorite “trashed” slides: cropping them into squares, experimenting with framing, bumping up the contrast.
Suddenly, I saw in these squares what I felt were living wounds. The texture, repetition, and gash-like quality of the leaks stuns me. The dark shadows haunt me. Together, they tell a visual story of human suffering. I don’t know how another photographer might react to these, maybe it’s laughable that I’m hanging onto them. Honestly, I found it appropriate that in the very flesh of this roll of film there are permanent, unwanted marks. I cannot change that fact, the clear evidence of violence. I can only honor it. Ultimately, these few photographs function as a kind of contemplative prep for the more “serious” ones I'll organize in part two. This is not a moment for me to provide historical background or reflection. You can find plenty of that online. (A good thing.) This is an aesthetic offering in response to suffering, a call to contemplate what can hardly be imagined.
Let us reckon with the wounds.
