Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe ...

The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe is also known as the Holocaust Memorial and located in Berlin as a remembrance of the Jewish victims from the Holocaust. The Memorial consists of a 4.7 acre site dotted with 2,711 concrete slabs or "stelae", arranged in a grid pattern on a sloping field. The stelae range from as little 8" to 15' 9" in heights. According to the Eisenman's (architect of the memorial) project text, the stelae are designed to produce an uneasy, confusing atmosphere, and the whole sculpture aims to represent a supposedly ordered system that has lost touch with human reason.

Beneath the memorial is an attached underground "Place of Information" providing graphic textual details of the Holocaust, pictures as well as other first person written artifacts of the atrocities of the time.  In addition,  holds the names of all known Jewish Holocaust victims, obtained from the Israeli museum Yad Vashem.  Also be forewarned as the stories, displays and artifacts are very graphic as should be, so its doubtful one will leave the same person they entered (I did not)...

Over the course of 2009, I have made two trips to the site resulting in the creation thousands of images in an attempt to get my mind around what this site intends to convey and represent it appropriately via the images I've created.  Techniques used have ranged from HDR to near infrared and include everything in between.  Even after all of  the thousands of pictures, I still do not feel I've gotten my head full around this project and most likely never will about how to capture what Eisenman has intended to share.  Additionally its been my practice to "name" my images to to assist in creating a "view" if you will.  However with these I just didn't feel right in naming them, therefore I've allowed them stand nameless in respect for what they represent. Click on each image for a larger view.