Borrowed time: survivors of Nazi Terezín remember

Uittreksel

"In 2012, Darling began photographing and interviewing the aging and rapidly vanishing population of Holocaust survivors who spent time at the German transit camp and ghetto located at Terezín, a former eighteenth-century military garrison located north of Prague. Many of those imprisoned there were awaiting transport to certain death at Auschwitz and other extermination camps. His sitters were sometimes asked to accompany him to the location of the painful memory to create the picture. Many were photographed within personal spaces and against environmental backdrops that Darling used to create an intimate and evocative portrait, many in a panoramic format. Each vulnerable face exposes a shared history of a horrendous past with a photographer sensitive to their experience. Darling captures a sense of "knowing" in the survivors; the images give life to virtues like honor, integrity, and courage in the expressions of the victims. They are not portraits of a defeated people, but rather, images of triumph. He has undertaken a profound and significant responsibility in the Holocaust Survivors project and exercises a quiet respectfulness in a portrayal of a persecuted people linked by brutalities of war for the necessity of history and humanity. Darling has edited down more than 150 portraits to a selection of seventy-five images that he has paired with accompanying text into a book about this unique Nazi camp and the last survivors of the experience."-- Provided by publisher.