OVERCOMING PHOTOGRAPHY – A developmental history

"I am a second-generation-Jew born in 1947. I have had previous careers in Baroque Music as a Violone player and in science and clinical practice as a Child Psychologist. After a midlife-crisis I studied from 2005 till 2010 at Gerrit Rietveld Art Academy Amsterdam".

“I always knew that I was Jewish, but that fact had hardly any meaning for me. About Judaism and about the war we did not talk in our family. And in terms of faith, we were ‘nothing’. When I was 45 years, I came in - some late - midlife crisis: job gone, wife gone, everything into question. I needed support, love and hope. And then I thought: I can go to the Baghwan, but I’m Jewish, so why not explore what Judaism has to offer me? My search for my Jewish roots began with a course in Jewish Spirituality and ended, by the way of double-bass playing in a klezmer group and attending various Jewish rabbinical courses, with a second- generation support group on the impact of the Holocaust. Finally I made a trip to Auschwitz (and back!) with the Auschwitz Committee. I was speechless and I was beaten quite perplexed: the history of Judaism was both outrageously beautiful (the Jewish mystical and Talmudic traditions) and at the same time unimaginably terrible (the horror of the Holocaust). This was almost unbearable for my tiny shoulders. And I asked myself: what can I do with these vehement and contradictory feelings? My answer was: the only possibility is to express these feelings in VISUAL ART.”

Organisators / Curators:

Christian Herrnbeck, Photo artist.

Alexandra Klei, Dipl.-Ing. Architecture, 2010 Ph.D. at the BTU on "the remembered location. Function and significance of the architecture of Nazi concentration camps for the mapping and presentation of history, "a lecturer at the Ruhr-University Bochum.

Annika Wienert, Art Historian, PhD project on the architecture of the Nazi death camps, a lecturer at the Ruhr-University Bochum, freelance art collection NRW

Duration: 02 - 06 in Oct. 2011

Location:  "Second Home" Schererstrasse 9, Berlin Wedding

Information: www.maartenvanderheijden.nl