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Mohrbooks Literary Agency
Sebastian Ritscher
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English
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MEMORY UNEARTHED

Maia-Mari Sutnik

The Lodz Ghetto Photographs of Henryk Ross

Memory Unearthed presents a selection of photographs taken by the Polish Jewish photographer Henryk Ross in the Lodz Ghetto from 1941 to 1944.
From 1941 to 1944, the Polish Jewish photographer Henryk Ross (1910–1991) was a member of an official team documenting the implementation of Nazi policies in the Lodz Ghetto in Poland. Covertly, he captured on film scores of both quotidian and intimate moments of Jewish life. In 1944, he buried thousands of negatives in an attempt to save this secret record. After the war, Ross returned to Poland to retrieve them. Although some were destroyed by nature and time, many negatives survived.

Memory Unearthed presents a selection of the nearly 3,000 surviving images—along with original prints and other archival material including curfew notices and newspapers—from the permanent collection at the Art Gallery of Ontario. Ross’s images offer a startling and moving new representation of one of humanity’s greatest tragedies. Striking for both their historical content and artistic quality, his photographs have a raw intimacy and emotional power that remain undiminished.
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Book

Published 2015-03-01 by Art Gallery of Ontario

Book

Published 2015-03-01 by Art Gallery of Ontario

Comments

Henryk Ross’s unexpected, often shocking, images of Jewish ghetto life get their first comprehensive show...These images convey how Ross, in the tradition of painters Goya, Honoré Daumier and George Grosz, used his camera both as aesthetic instrument and means of protest. And, like all of art history’s masters of political imagery, Ross depicted terror and beauty in equal measure. In addition to tragic moments, his Leica captured the hopeful ones: scenes of Jewish daily life, moments caught with wit, style and grace. Read more...

An all-seeing I: A closer look at the AGO’s sombre Lodz Ghetto photo exhibit. Read more...

Ross’s photographs are an extraordinary record of this time... touching and horrifying... Read more...