Tree (sachsenhausen Concentration Camp)

How is it possible to photograph in such places? When I visited Dachau (more or less under pressure) I left my camera at home.

Because it's called Memory John.

Anscojohn said:

How is it possible to photograph in such places? When I visited Dachau (more or less under pressure) I left my camera at home.

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I brought my camera(s) to Auschwitz. I took a few shots, then stopped. Too horrible.

ricksplace said:

Anscojohn said:

How is it possible to photograph in such places? When I visited Dachau (more or less under pressure) I left my camera at home.

Click to expand...

I brought my camera(s) to Auschwitz. I took a few shots, then stopped. Too horrible.

Click to expand...

*************
I understand.

It's important, I think, to photograph such places, despite how difficult it is. This tree seems to carry the burden of the ghosts of the place.

What are photograph if not the dead leaves of life, the last vestige of what has passed? I photograph what I see, and I photograph what I feel. I often think of it as an excorcism of my emotional content. In fact, the more difficult the experience, the more I want to photograph. That lens is a great filter, because it removes all the noise, and what is left is distilled in to what I exprience at exactly that point. The link below is a case in point, made in the Breendonk Concentration camp in Belgium. ALWAYS photograph what you feel.

http://www.apug.org/gallery1/showim...&direction=DESC&imageuser=21432&cutoffdate=-1

Rgds, Kal

...and as to the photograph, I most like the symbolism of that dark shadow to the bottom left...much meaning in that. rgds, K

Well, what struck me most was finding something so beautiful (the tree itself) in a place where so many people suffered so much for so long. I guess the tree was not there then, but I caught myself trying to imagine how the prisoners might have reacted, on those days, when something beautiful suddenly presented itself amid so much suffering and even hopelessness.

Edimilson said:

Well, what struck me most was finding something so beautiful (the tree itself) in a place where so many people suffered so much for so long. I guess the tree was not there then, but I caught myself trying to imagine how the prisoners might have reacted, on those days, when something beautiful suddenly presented itself amid so much suffering and even hopelessness.

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***********
Your statement is understandable to me and as a photographer, I commend you in the spirit others have expressed.
My response is visceral; perhaps excessively so. I was much younger (mid-twenties) when I lived in Munich for a year, doing research on a doctoral dissertation on the early Nazi party.
Perhaps at that age of my life, I was not yet inured to horror.
I had agreed to drive two U.S. military guys on re-enlistment leave to the camp in Dachau. I knew I would not be able to photograph there, so left my equipment at home. It was (for me) the correct choice.
I fault the administrators at Sachsenhausen for allowing a bit of beauty to grow there. The starkest reality should be preserved.
The fact is, none of the discussion in this direction would be posted here if your photograph were labelled as having been taken someplace banal.
Power in the captioning would be a topic for discussion at another locus.