Barry Salzman
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exhibitions involved
How We See The Word
Project Statement
The essential ethics of seeing underpins my landscape works.
In this ongoing project, started a decade ago, I focus on the recurrence of genocide and our collective responsibility as public witness. I use the landscape metaphorically to draw connections between each of these disparate and dark moments in modern history, while suggesting that we, as members of an amorphous humanity, form the true connective tissue between them.
To date the project includes landscape works from Namibia, Poland, Ukraine, Rwanda and Bosnia and Herzegovina, all made within witness distance of sites where acts of genocide were perpetrated. Throughout modern history, Western governments have repeatedly and consistently failed to act in time to stop perpetrators of genocide. As policy makers and government leaders throughout Europe and the United States continue to reckon with their inaction to stop acts of genocide, notably with the post-Holocaust genocides in Bosnia and Herzegovina and in Rwanda, so my work examines our role and responsibility as public witness.
Namibia was the site of the first genocide of the twentieth century, where the German occupiers of what was then South West Africa developed and tested concentration camps, which they brutally deployed against the Herero and Nama population from 1904-08. During the Second World War, the first mass victims of the Holocaust were often taken from their homes to locations just outside the towns and villages where they lived. There they were shot. The images from Poland and Ukraine examine those landscapes. In Rwanda in 1994, almost one million people were killed in one hundred days – there is no landscape anywhere in that small country that did not bear witness to the atrocities. And in Bosnia in 1995, the United Nations and the international community failed to honor their commitment to protect the Muslim enclave of Srebrenica and the surrounding areas.
In contrast to the specific locations I shoot, the images are intentionally non-specific. My intent is for the photographs to counter the way information on this topic is typically disseminated – through the precise lens of the photojournalist, historian, or documentarian. How I make each image is critical to the project’s concept – using a single exposure, without any compositing or layering in post-production. By using tools of abstraction, I try to expose the layered landscape: its complexities, varied interpretations, and the memories it evokes. I use the concept of “veils” frequently in my work. In creating a “veiled view,” by moving the camera during the exposure, I reflect on the self-imposed veils through which we bear witness, suggesting that it is our veiled societal view that continues to upend our unfulfilled promise of “never again.“
Metaphorically, the landscape – like us – witnesses all. It sheds its leaves in cover-up and complicity. But through its rebirth, so it rejuvenates. It carries with it the traces of the past and promises of the future. It triumphs over trauma. It is inextricably intertwined with our darkest moments and brightest days.
In these works, I am preoccupied with making aesthetic images not documenting brutal facts. By creating these images, my hope is to provide for mo- ments of reflection as viewers interpret the work in their own way and re-engage with subject matter we think we know.
Barry Salzman
Project Statement
The essential ethics of seeing underpins my landscape works.
In this ongoing project, started a decade ago, I focus on the recurrence of genocide and our collective responsibility as public witness. I use the landscape metaphorically to draw connections between each of these disparate and dark moments in modern history, while suggesting that we, as members of an amorphous humanity, form the true connective tissue between them.
To date the project includes landscape works from Namibia, Poland, Ukraine, Rwanda and Bosnia and Herzegovina, all made within witness distance of sites where acts of genocide were perpetrated. Throughout modern history, Western governments have repeatedly and consistently failed to act in time to stop perpetrators of genocide. As policy makers and government leaders throughout Europe and the United States continue to reckon with their inaction to stop acts of genocide, notably with the post-Holocaust genocides in Bosnia and Herzegovina and in Rwanda, so my work examines our role and responsibility as public witness.
Namibia was the site of the first genocide of the twentieth century, where the German occupiers of what was then South West Africa developed and tested concentration camps, which they brutally deployed against the Herero and Nama population from 1904-08. During the Second World War, the first mass victims of the Holocaust were often taken from their homes to locations just outside the towns and villages where they lived. There they were shot. The images from Poland and Ukraine examine those landscapes. In Rwanda in 1994, almost one million people were killed in one hundred days – there is no landscape anywhere in that small country that did not bear witness to the atrocities. And in Bosnia in 1995, the United Nations and the international community failed to honor their commitment to protect the Muslim enclave of Srebrenica and the surrounding areas.
In contrast to the specific locations I shoot, the images are intentionally non-specific. My intent is for the photographs to counter the way information on this topic is typically disseminated – through the precise lens of the photojournalist, historian, or documentarian. How I make each image is critical to the project’s concept – using a single exposure, without any compositing or layering in post-production. By using tools of abstraction, I try to expose the layered landscape: its complexities, varied interpretations, and the memories it evokes. I use the concept of “veils” frequently in my work. In creating a “veiled view,” by moving the camera during the exposure, I reflect on the self-imposed veils through which we bear witness, suggesting that it is our veiled societal view that continues to upend our unfulfilled promise of “never again.“
Metaphorically, the landscape – like us – witnesses all. It sheds its leaves in cover-up and complicity. But through its rebirth, so it rejuvenates. It carries with it the traces of the past and promises of the future. It triumphs over trauma. It is inextricably intertwined with our darkest moments and brightest days.
In these works, I am preoccupied with making aesthetic images not documenting brutal facts. By creating these images, my hope is to provide for mo- ments of reflection as viewers interpret the work in their own way and re-engage with subject matter we think we know.
Barry Salzman
Select Exhibitions, Screenings & Publications 2024
2024
Solo show, Museum Singer Laren, the Netherlands.
2023
Group exhibition, The Color of Light, Mirko Mayer Gallery, Cologne, Germany.
Solo exhibition, How We See The World, Mirko Mayer Gallery, Cologne, Germany.
2022
Solo presentation of select works from How We See The World: (a century of genocide) and The Day I Became Another Genocide Victim presented by Deepest Darkest, Paris Photo 2022.
Solo presentation of select works from How We See The World: (a century of genocide) presented by Deepest Darkest, Unseen Amsterdam 2022.
Group exhibition, LIFE:STILL, Rose Gallery, Santa Monica,
California, USA. Included with works by William Eggleston,
Dorothea Lang, Elger Esser and others.
One hundred day solo exhibition of The Day I Became
Another Genocide Victim, Johannesburg Holocaust and Genocide Centre, South Africa. Delivered keynote address at official Kwibuka 28 commemoration at invitation of Rwandan High Commission, 2022.
Solo presentation of select works from How We See The World: The Africa Works and The Day I Became Another Genocide Victim presented by Deepest Darkest, Investec Cape Town Art Fair, South Africa.
Published How We See The World: The Africa Works, Loeil De La Photographie (Eye of Photography), February 2022.
2021
Group exhibition, Home Is Where The Art Is, Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa (Zeitz MOCAA), Cape Town, South Africa.
2020
Group exhibition and auction for the Friends of The Israel Museum, Jerusalem.
Group exhibition, Psithurism, Daor Contemporary, Cape Town, South Africa.
Exhibition of works from How We See The World, curated section of Latitudes Art Fair; curated by Executive Director, Lucy MacGarry (curator of The South African Pavilion at the 57th Venice Biennale).
Essay on How We See The World published in FotoNostrum, monthly photography publication of Mediterranean House of Photography (FotoNostrum SL), Iss. 7, September 2020.
Published The Day I Became Another Genocide Victim, Loeil De La Photographie (Eye of Photography), April 2020.
2019Solo exhibition The Other Side of Christmas, Deepest Darkest, Cape Town, South Africa.
Photo London group exhibition and charity auction of Art On A Postcard, to benefit The Hepatitis C Trust, London.
Essay on The Day I Became Another Genocide Victim, published in the quarterly journal Something We Africans Got: Africa, Arts, Critical Thought, Iss. 9, 2019.
2018
International Photographer of The Year award, Deeper Perspective Category, awarded by International Photography Awards (IPA).
Group exhibition: International Photography Awards Best of Show, curated by Catherine Edelman, New York City, USA.
2016
Screening of It Never Rained On Rhodes at Festival of Tolerance, Ljubljana,
Slovenia.
2015
Festival of Tolerance, Zagreb, Croatia. Founder and President, two-time Oscar winning producer, Branco Lustig.
18th Annual New York Sephardic Jewish Film Festival, New York City. • Published Sharing Makes The Picture: The Ubiquity of Image Sharing in Social Media Networks. In: Vision Anew: The Lens and Screen Arts, edited by Adam Bell and Charles Traub, University of California Press, 2015.
Published Inside Banksy’s Dismaland With Artist Barry Salzman, DesignBoom, September 2015.
2014
Screening of It Never Rained On Rhodes at 70th anniversary commemoration of the deportation of Jews from Rhodes, Rhodes Island, Greece.
Los Angeles Sephardic Jewish Film Festival, Los Angeles, California.
2013
Graduated with Master of Fine Arts in Photography, Video and Related Media, The School of Visual Arts, New York City.