Month: August 2011

Yad Vashem, Israel

“displacement, concentration, deportation and extermination”

North Terrace, Holocaust History Museum, Yad Vashem, Jerusalem 2011

© Leslie Hossack

In 1953, Yad Vashem was established as an institution “dedicated to the study and commemoration of Jewish annihilation at the hands of the Nazis.” (Joan Ockman, A Place in the World for a World Displaced) Located atop the Mount of Remembrance, the 45-acre site includes research centres, memorials and museums. Yad Vashem Director Avner Shalev writes: “We wished to call visitors attention to the fact that the Holocaust spanned the entire European continent, that the process was set in motion in Northern Africa, and that it threatened to reach the Middle East. Wherever the Germans came, the Jews faced the same process: displacement, concentration, deportation and extermination.” (Building a Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem)

The museum was designed by internationally acclaimed architect Moshe Safdie whose other works include the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa. Safdie’s museum is a 600-foot long, triangular, sky light tunnel made of concrete. According to municipal law, all buildings must be faced with local Jerusalem stone. This 1918 stone ordinance dates back to the British Mandate in Palestine, and Safdie had to get special permission to use concrete rather than limestone for the Holocaust History Museum.

This photograph shows visitors standing on the terrace at the end of the tunnel-like museum, looking out toward Jerusalem. In The Architecture of Memory, Safdie writes about the power of emerging into light. “For the new museum, cutting through the mountains and bursting northward, dramatically cantilevering the structure over the Jerusalem pine forest to provide views of the hills beyond took this life-affirming experience to another level.”

Architect:  Moshe Safdie     Date:  2005

from Paris to Berlin & Berlin to Jerusalem

Memorial to the Martyrs of the Deportation, Paris 2009

Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, Berlin 2010

© Leslie Hossack

Having completed a major study of change and continuity in Paris in 2009, I travelled to Berlin in 2010 to continue my urban explorations. Somehow, Paris led to Berlin, and Berlin led to Jerusalem.

My journey to Israel in 2011 really started in Berlin. After completing a series of photographic studies of Nazi architecture and the Berlin Wall, I felt compelled to travel to Israel – another charged landscape. Put simply, I wanted to explore the link between historic Berlin and modern Israel. Berlin was my springboard to Israel, both literally and figuratively.

In both places, I was fascinated by the theme of loss, longing and lamentation – individual and collective. Loss of land, loss of innocence, loss of humanity, loss of freedom, loss of life: these notions haunted me in Berlin and in Israel. For me, the power of these iconic locations lies in the responses that they elicit from ordinary individuals.

After returning home from Israel, I was both intrigued and perplexed by what I had seen while observing everyday life in Jerusalem. I wanted to make some sense out of what I had witnessed. I do not pretend to understand the horrors of the Holocaust, the long and complex histories of the Holy City, or the current politics of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

However, the one question that kept running through my mind as I explored historic Berlin and modern Israel was: at what cost?

Memorial to the Martyrs of the Deportation

“Dedicated to the living memory of the 200,000 French deportees sleeping in the night and the fog, exterminated in the Nazi concentration camps.”

Hall of Remembrance, Memorial to the Martyrs of the Deportation, Paris 2009

© Leslie Hossack

The Memorial to the Martyrs of the Deportation is located in Paris at the eastern end of Ile de la Cité, behind Notre Dame Cathedral. This monument, designed by Georges Pingusson, was inaugurated by President Charles de Gaulle in 1962.

The Hall of Remembrance is a narrow underground chamber whose walls are studded with 200,000 lighted crystals, symbolizing the deportees who perished. The dark corridor can only be viewed through a small window that is covered with heavy iron bars.

Pingusson’s style of commemorative architecture is very different from that of Moshe Safdie, architect of the Holocaust History Museum at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem. Two photographs of Safdie’s Israeli memorials are included in my exhibition CITIES OF STONE – PEOPLE OF DUST, on view at the Red Wall Gallery in Ottawa until September 2nd, 2011.

For more details please see:

http://www.spao.ca/specialevents.htmlhttp://www.spao.ca/specialevents.html

Esplanade, Tuileries Gardens

Three schoolboys play soccer on the Esplanade near the Louvre.

Esplanade, Tuileries, Paris 2009, looking east toward the Marsan Pavilion and the Louvre

© Leslie Hossack

Three schoolboys are playing soccer on the Esplanade des Feuillants beside the elevated Terrasse des Feuillants. These avenues were laid out by André Le Nôtre when he was asked to redesign the Tuileries in 1664.

Beyond the boys is a sculpture by Gustave Michel entitled Monument to Jules Ferry (1910). (Please click on the image to see more details.) Ferry was a politician who sponsored the modernization of the French education system in the late 19th century.

The large building in the background is the Marsan Pavilion located on the north side of the Louvre. This pavilion was rebuilt in 1871 to match the Flore Pavilion on the south side.

Jeu de Paume, Tuileries Gardens

Behind the Jeu de Paume are the rooftops of the buildings on the rue de Rivoli.

Jeu de Paume, Tuileries, Paris 2009, looking north over the Jeu de Paume

© Leslie Hossack

The building in the foreground is the Galerie Nationale du Jeu de Paume, constructed in the Tuileries in 1861. It was once used as a tennis court, but today it houses contemporary art exhibitions.

Behind the Jeu de Paume are the rooftops of the arcaded buildings on north side of the rue de Rivoli. This fashionable street was opened along the edge of the gardens in 1801.

The dome of the Nôtre-Dame-de-l’Assomption can be seen in the background. This church was built between 1670 and 1676 at the corner of rue Saint-Honoré and rue Cambon. Now it is the Polish Church of Paris.

Figure Couchée, Tuileries Gardens

Henry Moore’s sculpture, Figure Couchée, reclines near the large octagonal pond.

Figure Couchée, Tuileries, Paris 2009, looking south across the octagonal pond toward the Musée de l’Orangerie

© Leslie Hossack

Henry Moore’s sculpture Figure Couchée (Reclining Figure, 1951) was installed in the Tuileries in 1998 at the foot of the stairs leading to the elevated Terrasse du Bord-de-l’Eau.

Lion au serpent (1832) by Antoine Louis Barye, is situated up on the terrace near the columns of the Orangerie. (Please click on the image to see more details.) Constructed in 1852, the Orangerie was later transformed into exhibition galleries for Claude Monet’s Waterlilies.

The large octagonal pond in the foreground is surrounded by metal chairs. For centuries the gardens have provided chairs for the public, and to this day visitors are not allowed to walk on the grass anywhere in the park.

Terrasse, Tuileries Gardens

Aristide Maillol’s sculpture Monument à Cézanne reclines on the Terrasse.

Terrasse, Tuileries, Paris 2009, looking east toward the Pyramid at the Louvre

© Leslie Hossack

Aristide Maillol’s classical sculpture, entitled Monument à Cézanne, sits on the broad terrace that runs between the Carrousel Garden and the Grand Carré. Maillol’s original sculpture (1912-1925) was first installed in the Tuileries in 1929.

The Monument à Cézanne in this photograph is a copy made in 1943; the original sculpture is now on display in the nearby Musée d’Orsay. Many additional works by Maillol were installed in the gardens in 1964.

Allée de Diane, Tuileries Gardens

The man in this image is about to cross the Allée de Diane and enter the woods.

Allée de Diane, Tuileries, Paris 2009, looking east toward the Louvre from the Allée de Diane

© Leslie Hossack

The man in the centre of this image is about to cross the Allée de Diane and enter the “Grand Couvert” or wooded area of the Tuilleries. Three parallel allées bordered by carefully trimmed chestnut trees run for two long city blocks through the woods to the octagonal basin. Thus the gardens provide a shortcut from the Louvre to the Place de la Concorde.

On the left side of the photograph, a crowd can be seen near the round pond in the centre of the “Grand Carée.” (Please click on the image to see more details.) Many large vases from the 17th and 18th centuries are scattered throughout this section of the garden.

Waldeck-Rousseau Monument, Tuileries Gardens

The Tuileries is the largest and oldest garden in Paris.

Waldeck-Rousseau Monument, Tuileries, Paris 2009, looking east toward the Louvre

© Leslie Hossack

The Tuileries, the first public garden in Paris, is the city’s largest and oldest garden, initially established in 1563. The gardens were completely redesigned in 1664 by André Le Nôtre; the basic structure of the formal French garden that he laid out still remains in place today, despite many renovations and updates over the years. What a wonderful example of urban change and continuity.

Located in the 1er arrondissement in the very heart of Paris, the gardens provide a welcome contrast to the crowded sidewalks, congested roadways, and polluted atmosphere of central Paris. Each time I entered the Tuileries with camera in hand, I had the sense that if I just stood still long enough, I could actually hear the silence. And that is what I attempted to photograph: the silence. Even the boys playing soccer on the Esplanade seemed to be part of a silent movie in this splendid setting.

Before departing for Paris, I studied old photographs of the city. During the last 100 years, the Tuileries Gardens have been photographed by many well-known photographers, including: Eugène Atget (Jardin des Tuileries, 1907); André Kertész (Jardin des Tuileries, 1928-1930); Brassaï (Banc aux Tuileries, 1930-1932); Robert Doisneau (Amour et Barbelés, Tuileries, 1944); and Henri Cartier-Bresson (Jardin des Tuileries, 1974). When I arrived in Paris in April 2009, it was a challenge to reconcile these representations from the past with today’s reality. As a solution, I have tried to combine a formal approach to composition with a softer modern palette to produce these timeless images of Paris.