An archive of contemporary photographs of the sites of the Budapest ghetto, a “dispersed” ghetto in which Jews existed in close proximity with Christians during the Nazi occupation of 1944-1945, but were effectively unseen through restrictions placed on movement, association and commerce. The buildings designated as “yellow-star” units existed in essentially the same spaces as non-ghetto buildings but functioned as quite different places. In this series I explore how photography can be used to suggest what is no longer present, how photography can be used to see and re-see the past.
I work by creating images and presenting them in the form of photographs, videos, and artist’s books. In my work I draw connections between the visual and the world of ideas as presented in literary, historical, philosophical, and psychoanalytic texts. I approach photography as a detective process revolving around considerations of history, place, ephemerality, transience, and liminality. I consider my work an investigation and attempt to depict or suggest through photography what’s not there, those things that, in the words of Walter Benjamin, “flash up at the instant they can be recognized."
