A WOUNDED LANDSCAPE Bearing Witness to the Holocaust
by Marc Wilson
04.02.23 - 09.04.23
by Marc Wilson
PRESS RELEASE
130 LOCATIONS, 20 COUNTRIES, 22 SURVIVOR STORIES, 6 YEARS
Side Gallery is honoured to showcase the world exhibition premiere of photographer Marc Wilson’s personal journey, bearing witness to the Holocaust.
A Wounded Landscape’ combines contemporary documentary imagery with audio testimony. It is a reminder of how the Nazis and their collaborators perpetrated this atrocity over a vast landscape in radically different environments and how experiences of persecution usually started in places that the persecuted called home.
At nearly 40,000 sites across Europe between 1939-1945, the Nazis and their collaborators systematically murdered almost six million Jews and many people from other groups whom they considered racially inferior or for ideological and political reasons. They included Roma, homosexuals, the mentally and physically disabled, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Communists, and more than three million Soviet prisoners of war.
The European landscape is scarred by the physical traces of the Nazis’ campaign of persecution and destruction. Some of these traces are conspicuous, bearing names recognised worldwide: Dachau, Belsen, and Auschwitz, but most are far less known, having been reabsorbed into our everyday world via the passage of time. They are in cities, towns, villages, fields, and forests. They were sites where individual killings and slaughter on a mass scale took place; the numbers involved are almost beyond our understanding. Together they formed a pathway to genocide: destroyed communities and ghettos, internment camps, transit camps, labour camps, sub-camps, concentration camps, displacement camps and extermination camps. The surrounding landscapes and the forced journeys between them connect them. They were places where literal life-or-death decisions were made but also sites of hope, survival, and memory.
For Six years (2015-2021), Marc Wilson journeyed across 130 locations in 20 countries, documenting the physical traces of the Holocaust and the stories of 22 survivors and their descendants. Their experiences are recounted in English, French, Hebrew, Polish, Dutch and Russian.
SIDE GALLERY
Site of the Lietūkis Garage Massacre, where more than 60 Lithuania Jews were clubbed to death in June 1941.
Miško street, Kaunas, Lithuania, 2019. ©Marc Wilson
‘Gradually we were no longer allowed to go to cinemas, theatres, restaurants or clubs, or even to sit on park benches. Jews weren’t allowed to own cars, or travel on public transport without a permit.’
Harry’s mother’s travel pass. London 2017.
©Marc Wilson
Harry Mans (1933-2020). London, United Kingdom. 26 July 2018.
©Marc Wilson
IJzeren Man (Iron Man) Lake. Vught, Netherlands. 2017.
©Marc Wilson
Guards from Vught transit camp would play with their families at this holiday resort next to the camp.
Further images available upon request contact side.gallery@amber-online.com
Prisoners from Mauthausen were forced to jump from this cliff to their death, It was known by camp guards as the ‘parachute jump’.
Mauthausen, Austria, November 2016.
©Marc Wilson
Hot air chambers in the central sauna at Auschwitz II-Birkenau.
Oświęcim, Poland, 2016.
©Marc Wilson
Lilian Black OBE (1951-2020), daughter of Eugene Black (1928-2016).
Leeds, United Kingdom. 21 May 2018. ©Marc Wilson
I knew from about the age of eight that there was something untoward. I knew that my father had been in the concentration camps but nobody really knew the whole story. He’d reveal little bits; I wanted to ask him about it but I didn’t feel I could. I didn’t want to hurt him any more than he’d been hurt so it was my mother who eventually told me. I kept asking because we’d go to family parties and there would be nobody there from his side of the family. Why didn’t we have grandparents and why did my father have this accent?’
Gelsenberg, a sub camp of Buchenwald. Gelsenkirchen February 2018.
©Marc Wilson
Eugene’s sisters were among some 150 female slave labourers killed in September 1944 by Allied bombing raids when they were refused shelter. About 2,000 Hungarian Jewish women were subjected to forced labour, including the clearing of rubble after Allied bombings.
ABOUT MARC WILSON
Born in London, Marc Wilson’s studies took him from Sociology to Photography, and he has been taking photographs ever since. His images document the memories, histories and stories set in the landscapes surrounding us.
Wilson works on long-term documentary projects. They include ‘The Last Stand’ (20102014) and ‘A Wounded Landscape - bearing witness to the Holocaust’ (2015-2021). He has published 4 photo books to date.
Solo exhibitions include those at The Royal Armouries Museum, Focal point Gallery in the UK, and Spazio Klien in Italy. Group shows include those at The Photographers Gallery and the Association of Photographers Gallery, London, and internationally at The Athens PhotoFestival and Tel Aviv Museum of Art. His work has been published in numerous journals and magazines, from National Geographic and The British Journal of Photography and Raw Magazine to Wired and Dezeen.
For more information about Marc Wilson and his work visit: www.marcwilson.co.uk
EVENT
Mark Wilson will be speaking about his work at the exhibition opening event on Saturday 4th February, 2023 at 2pm. It is a free event and audiences are welcome to attend at the venue or online. See website for reservations info.
ABOUT SIDE GALLERY
For press images, further information, and interview requests please contact: side.gallery@amber-online.com 0191 232 2208
Address: 5-9 Side Newcastle upon Tyne NE1 3JE UK
Opening times: Thurs - Sun (11am -5pm) Free Entry
Online access: Web: www.amberside.org Facebook: @SideGallery Instagram: @amber_sidegallery Twitter: @SideGallery
Side Gallery exhibits the best in contemporary and historical documentary photography. Opened on Newcastle’s quayside in 1977 by the Amber Film & Photography Collective, it has brought the work of many of the worlds most renowned and celebrated photographers to the region for all to enjoy for free, as well as supporting and promoting the work of emerging documentarians.
For more information on the history of Side Gallery visit: www.amber-online.com
A Wounded Landscape exhibition & event is supported by the Newcastle City Council Holocaust Memorial Day Fund.
Side Gallery is funded by:
SIDE GALLERY