This is my diptych set of anthotype (basically organic matter used as emulsion – in this case, a lovely pinot noir on watercolor paper) prints. Each print contains two images – one from Afghanistan and one from Yad Vashem, the holocaust museum in Jerusalem.
When assembling the images, I was thinking about the monuments, museums, etc. erected to honor victims of the holocaust and to warn generations of the events of history so we might not repeat them paired with this sense that, as terrible as the holocaust was, the Jews during World War II are not the only people throughout history who have suffered greatly. Even looking at the history of the Jews, it’s not the only point in time when they’ve suffered. Following WWII, things were still quite bad for Jews in the USSR, for instance.
As long as there have been multiple people groups, there have been prejudices. And, it sucks.
I made these images as a new set, but, in a way, an extension of the set of boys and young men in Afghanistan as a way to think of their often precarious lives and the lives of others around the world who continue to suffer, despite our modern, “enlightened” era. Were we truly enlightened, the 1 in 9 people in the world lacking clean and safe drinking water, for instance, would have it. But, no, water and food are still regarded as means of control and not a given. There are no monuments to the nearly 3.5 million people who die annually from a water related disease (water.org).
