The Landscape of Our Memory is a long-term artistic project created by Gabriela Bulišová and Mark Isaac. The project addresses the “dispersed Holocaust” or “Holocaust by Bullets” by commemorating individuals who were killed in or near their hometowns rather than in concentration camps. The artists intended to begin the project in Ukraine, but because of the full-scale war, the first phase was shifted to Poland.
Despite the widespread impression that the Holocaust was defined primarily by death camps like Auschwitz, more than half of the Jewish victims died outside of major concentration camps, often in or near their hometowns. Along with Jews, there were many other victims, including Ukrainians, Poles, Roma and Sinti, people with disabilities, gay people, and others. Sites of mass murder perpetrated by the Nazis and their collaborators are still being located today. Those that have already been discovered are often not memorialized or are poorly memorialized, and the tragic events have not been historically and culturally processed.
We need to do everything to tear unknown victims from mass graves in contaminated landscapes and from oblivion, and to restore their names, faces and stories.
— Martin Pollack
The centerpiece of the project consists of “anthotype” portraits of individuals murdered during the dispersed Holocaust. To produce these images, the artists gathered plants and flowers growing at mass graves, made photo-sensitive emulsions, and exposed them in the sun to create loving tributes to some of those who had lost their lives. Because the plants are gathered from the mass grave site where the individual’s body still lies, the final photograph likely contains, at the molecular level, something of his or her remains. These portraits help restore each person’s humanity and avoid consigning them to the status of faceless statistics.
To memorialize those for whom no name or photograph exists, the artists have turned to “witness trees,” or trees that stand at the site of Holocaust atrocities. Using a World War II-era analog camera, they created collaged, black-and-white silhouettes of the witness trees, which are known to contain human remains. In addition, they made recordings of the interior sounds of these trees, which might be interpreted as a kind of testimony about the tragic events that had occurred there.
The artists have also relied on several other strategies that translate the traces of the atrocities into a language we can understand. After gathering water from the rivers where the ashes of victims had been dumped, the artists used the “watergram” technique, which captures water in motion in the analog darkroom, to commemorate those who had been murdered. They also applied the “lumen printing” process, in which organic material is placed on photo-sensitive paper and exposed in the sun, to create abstract images demonstrating the uniqueness of every individual lost in the Holocaust.
Nature becomes representation…in the sense of making the victims present. Nature is a faithful companion and suffering’s most intimate witness.
— Roma Sendyka
Finally, a video and sound installation offers an intimate experience of the places in Poland where unthinkable violence occurred. The installation combines matter-of-fact text descriptions of mass killing sites with recordings of what it sounds like to stand in those places today. This calls attention not only to the huge number of killing sites, but also to the everyday activities that now occur in and around them.
All of the diverse techniques draw directly on the landscape of the dispersed Holocaust, a strategy that acknowledges the growing scholarly consensus that genocide and ecocide are closely related. This relationship is more carefully documented in present-day Ukraine than ever before in history. Recognizing these connections will better prepare us to avoid future genocides and ecocides, including the possible extinction of the human race as a result of the climate crisis.
Photography is the inventory of mortality…. Photographs state the innocence, the vulnerability of lives heading toward destruction, and this link between photography and death haunts all photographs….
— Susan Sontag
The artists wish to thank the International Book Arsenal Festival, Marci Shore, Fulbright Ukraine, the Polish-American Fulbright Commission, and countless others who provided invaluable assistance. More information is available at www.bulisova-isaac.com.
The project is supported by the Partnership Fund for Resilient Ukraine (PFRU), funded by aid from the governments of Canada, Estonia, Finland, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom.
The exhibition will open at 12:00 p.m. on May 29 and last until June 15, 2025, in the Mala Gallery (Lavrska St., 10)
Working hours:
Wednesday to Sunday, from 12:00 to 19:00
Free admission