From Darkness
The Jewish Museum in Berlin in is well worth a visit, and not least for the iconic architecture of Daniel Libeskind, which becomes part of the exhibition. It is not just about the Shoah/ Holocaust, although that is a central theme of course, but also about Jewish life and art through the centuries.
An architectural feature is dark windowless shafts running the height of the building, to represent “that which cannot be displayed” , artefacts turned to ashes and works of people killed by the Nazis and their non-existent descendants. It represents the hole in the Jewish community left by those who perished.
The entrance is through a windowless door at the bottom of the shaft, which closes automatically and on a dull winters day, eyes need a moment to adjust before they can see anything. I leant against a wall whilst I waited and found it very moving. But how to express that in a photograph? In the end, I decided to underexpose and thoroughly mistreat the sensor, by raising the brightness in post (about 5 stops, I think) and no processing for noise. This dark thread-bear image is an approximate visual representation of my feelings at the time.
![H1227318-3.jpg](/a/thumb/eh1DfisAmNq7gBBCZsDZsfilF2N4VJ2KOqaSHyy2DUiArRJUQilZZEFTnwY4W71Q/13800/?shva=1)