artist statement:

I was exceptionally fortunate to have been given the opportunity to take part in the Holocaust Education Trust’s ‘Lessons From Auschwitz’ project in 2013/14, and to later become a Holocaust Educational Trust Ambassador.

As part of this scheme, I heard the firsthand testimony of a holocaust survivor and was given the opportunity to fly to Poland to visit the former Nazi death and concentration camp Auschwitz-Birkenau. This experience was deeply moving and was one of the most world-changing experiences of my life. Hearing the lived experience of a survivor, and the horrors they witnessed whilst at the camp had a profound impact on the subsequent images I created whilst in Poland.

On the visit, we were taken initially to Oświęcim to visit the Jewish graveyards desecrated by the Nazis after they invaded Poland at the beginning of WW2. We then visited the former Polish army barracks that the Nazi SS forces made into Auschwitz I, the first stage of what would later be expanded into the site of the Holocaust’s most horrifying extermination camp, Auschwitz II-Birkenau.

The most difficult thing to get across in images is just the incomprehensible vastness of human suffering those grounds experienced, and the sheer scale of how large the site is. 1.1Million people were killed at this camp alone, and around one in six of the total Jews killed in the Holocaust died here.

Documenting the area as it is now, whilst trying to convey the morbid gravity of the site’s history is an impossible task. The images I created whilst there can’t possibly convey the cold quietness of the site, and the chilling weight one feels walking on that ground knowing the history of what happened there.

The images taken as part of this project were initially shown to students of South Essex College in an exhibition as part of the college’s Holocaust Remembrance Day events and was later also exhibited at The Forum, Southend in July 2014.

this project was completed and exhibited in July 2014.