The Museum of History and Holocaust Education at Kennesaw State is currently showcasing a photography exhibit entitled “Berlin: A Jewish Ode to the Metropolis” which depicts Berlin, Germany between the years of 2008 and 2013.
Photographer Jason Langer spent these five years photographing prominent architectural sites for Nazi regimes, museum artifacts including a Nazi uniform and gravesites for fallen victims of the Holocaust. He contrasts these photographs with ones of modern people living their lives in the city.
Each photograph in the series was shot in black-and-white film and developed by Langer himself; the photographer used approximately 300 rolls of film during his entire time shooting Berlin. The exhibit is set up in such a way that walking from the beginning of the wall to the end takes the viewer on a walk as if they were traveling from West to East Berlin.
The exhibit poses a juxtaposition in that pictures of passersby and pedestrians simply living their lives are placed next to photographs of sites where so many Jewish lives were taken just decades before.
Two of the photographs featured in the exhibit are entitled “Boys” and “Young Women” and in both photographs, the people in front of the camera are laughing with friends and dressed in casual streetwear, seemingly non-fearful and content.
These photographs are placed near another framed picture titled “Pathology Table” showing a site where medical experiments were performed on victims of the Holocaust.
On Nov. 9 Langer gave a guided tour of his exhibition and a powerful speech about his time in Germany.
He spoke of the experience of being in the city: “I started to feel haunted walking the streets of Berlin” and “started to realize the fact that I was Jewish.” Langer went on to remind his listeners that the concept of collective memory became very real to him in those moments. He reported: “fear is embedded into my psyche.”
Jason Langer was raised Jewish and spent a number of years living in Israel with his brother and their mother. He expressed that this exhibit mirrors the story of his mother leaving her husband to return to her Jewish roots, but also “the experience of a seven or eight-year-old boy walking the city which he deeply fears.”
Exhibit Curator Adina Langer spoke in an interview about the buildings and sites that were so prominent during the Holocaust as “preserved but also in ruins” and about the haunted feeling one gets when looking at how “deceptively civilized” these areas look when such atrocities occurred as a result of them.
Jason Langer’s new book “Berlin” reflects the same themes as his exhibit and features 135 photographs as well as essays by the photographer. It is on sale now on his website.
The Museum of History and Holocaust Education where Langer’s exhibit is still being showcased is open and free for the public from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday.
