From Where They Stood

In his documentary and detective work, Christoph Cognet maps the artistic and photographic reflections of life in concentration camps as perceived by the prisoners themselves. Secretly taken documentary photographs are a unique testimony of events that have been fading from collective memory; at the same time, they represent a fascinating subject of visual anthropology research. The reconstruction of the past and present perceptions of former concentration camps such as Ravensbrück, Dachau or Auschwitz is a symphony of human fates and symbols of the darkest times in European history. Mass graves, gas chambers and the humanitarian tragedy seen through the lens of media archaeology. „Cognet, in recovering the original versions, ultimately aims to give the right recognition to those who risked their lives to obtain cameras and films to steal, to revive the gestures that accompanied the creation of a clandestine shot, to tell the story of each photo in the place where it was produced.” (Claudio Panella)