I have visited many concentration and extermination camps, from the most bare such as that of Dachau, near Munich, where almost nothing remains except a building and the layout of the deportees' barracks, to Auschwitz, perhaps the most challenging to visitors, where millions of suitcases, glasses, and shoes form mountains in front of which one can but quiver, where you find yourself in front of the execution wall, riddled with bullets, where you can see the crematorium, where dozens of survivors come back to remember the friends and family they lost. And then Mauthausen in Austria, Gross Rosen and Treblinka in Poland, ending the journey at the lesser known Risiera di San Sabba, near Trieste, Italy.
Works
For this photographic project I chose bright colors, and at times blinding light, strong contrasts, pure lines. I wanted this project to help visitors immerse in the emotional experience of those who, at the time, suffered the Shoah, but with the sober compositional tones this requires: no sensational photographs, but clear, synthetic images, which intend to spark thought but not to offend sensitiveness, photos in which what matters is not spotting the exact place, but grasping the message, a message that resonates strongly in the reigning silence.
© Alessandra Repossi