Artwork Details
b. 1938
About the Artwork
In the early 1990s, Judy Glickman Lauder photographed the memorial sites of concentration camps to contend with and maintain the memory of the horrors experienced by her Jewish ancestors.
Lauder’s photograph Execution Wall, Auschwitz Extermination Camp, Poland (1990, printed 2023) shows bouquets of flowers placed by visitors to the Auschwitz memorial site. Lauder used infrared photography to achieve the dreamlike image, which illuminates certain biological materials. Flower petals stuffed into bullet holes in the wall smatter the image, revealing the site of murder while also offering a message of hope of future life in the face of mass genocide.
As the daughter of a photographer and a photographic activist and storyteller in her own right, Lauder’s photographs have been exhibited worldwide. Traveling extensively throughout her life, she spent decades visiting Holocaust memorial sites, acting as a witness to her ancestor’s trauma. “We live in a dangerous world,” says Lauder, “and our ability to destroy has only grown manyfold since World War II. We cannot allow hatred and injustice, power and greed to gain a foothold – anywhere or towards anyone.”