Convoy to the East, and way back, 2002
In 1997 I conducted a study on the route of the deportation of my mother, a resistant detained from 1943 to 1945 in Auschwitz, Birkenau (Poland), Ravensbrück (Germany) and Mauthausen (Austria).
I have cut the 28 months deportation long into two periods: a winter trip to the detention and the way back to France in spring, the day before the commemoration of 1st May 1945.
I followed the very close route, arriving at Auschwitz camp on the 27th of January, the “same” day she arrived there 54 years earlier. Though I undertook a trip to Eastern Europe.
The known representation of the entrance to the camp of Birkenau, the long black building flattened in its snowy light, decided me to shoot with a panoramic view camera, on a tripod, in a very frontal way.
This work has allowed me to explore issues on the constant approach of the photographer, mine was certainly imbued with the tales of exile: looking for the apparence of time in the pictures, or its obvious absence, looking for the right distance while remaining far from horror and the neutrality of framing: the aesthetic choice by which it should be the (best?) way to transcribe so many elements of documentary evidences.
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