There is no why here.

When Italian chemist Primo Levi arrived at Auschwitz, after a winter train ride jammed into unheated box cars with 650 other Jews, he was thirsty. Hanging from the eave of a building were icicles. Levi asked a guard if he could have one. The guard said, “No”. Levi asked why. The guard responded, “There is no why here.”


In September last year, we walked into a gallery in Albuquerque (as you do), it was run by a cooperative of photographers (good idea) and was full of what you would expect in New Mexico. Stunning landscapes, awe inspiring star trails, moody adobe churches and, right at the back of the gallery, the most incredible set of images I have ever seen.

Karl Koenig spent 10 years of his short life photographing the extermination camps, he then processed some of these images using a technique he had invented called gumoil. I won't go into to details about the process (you can watch a video on YouTube) but I will urge you to look at this work if you can. Koenig's visualisation and the gumoil process transform images that we are all familiar with into living entities, these prints draw you in...you feel the threat. They made me cry......I don't cry easily and I have never cried before because of a photograph.