Camp Uniform
"To me looking at this picture brings back memories. I feel like I am reliving a painful past so the world will never forget those that were left in the past."
Stories of Survival: Object. Image. Memory.
is a project of the Illinois Holocaust Museum & Education Center
and photographer Jim Lommasson.
Stories of Survival: Object. Image. Memory.
Object.
The objects in this exhibition reflect the lives of their one-time owners: childhood, home, culture, and religious practice; but also war, violence, displacement, and exile. They have survived the Holocaust and genocides or conflicts in Armenia, Bosnia, Cambodia, Darfur, Iraq, South Sudan, and Syria. A snap decision or a stroke of luck resulted in what remains from a lost world.
Documents, a Bible, a candleholder, a recipe book, or keys to your home--dislodged from their original surroundings, these seemingly ordinary objects are now storytellers. They represent futures that were forever altered.
Image.
The images in this exhibition were taken by photographer Jim Lommasson. Nearly a decade ago, Lommasson began working on a collaborative photographic and writing project with Iraqi and Syrian refugees to the US, based on the objects they brought with them to this country. In this exhibition, multiple victim and survivor groups, and their descendants, were asked to participate.
Lommasson photographed each object on a plain white background, creating a blank palette around each. Alone on a white ground, the objects become elevated from the everyday to the iconic. The participants were then asked to engage with the photographs and express themselves however they felt comfortable, directly on the print.
Memory.
Writings and creative expressions on the images attach memories to the objects. Autobiographical narratives become communal history. These stories of survival resulting from incomprehensible inhumanity represent shared experiences despite differences of time and place: experiences of resilience and courage, the fragility of life, family history, and hope for the future. In some ways, these are experiences shared by all of us.
What would you take with you? What would you keep?
"I was living in Germany in the thirties, and I knew that
Hitler had made it his mission to exterminate all Jews,
especially the children and the women who could bear
children in the future. I was unable to save my people,
only their memory."
Hitler had made it his mission to exterminate all Jews,
especially the children and the women who could bear
children in the future. I was unable to save my people,
only their memory."
– Roman Vishniac
Photographer
Pavlovsk, Russia, 1897 - New York, 1990
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