The Places and Clothes of Genocide Victims
Deepest Darkest gallery presents “How We See The World” and “The Day I Became Another Genocide Victim”, two series by photographer Barry Salzman, at Paris Photo.
Ten years ago Barry Salzman, who was born in Zimbabwe and schooled in South Africa, started taking photos in Namibia, Poland, Ukraine, Rwanda and Bosnia and Herzegovina, within witness distance of sites where acts of genocide were perpetrated. Intentionally unspecific, the photographs try to convey the complexities carried by the vision of such a charged landscape. The camera moves to “reflect on the self imposed veils through which we bear witness”.
The Quiet Valley. Lake Perucac (Near Srebrenica), Bosnia and Herzegovina, 2022
Beyond The Pictorial Dimension, Nyamure, Rwanda, 2018
A Place Without Context, Karongi, Rwanda, 2018
The Constant Flux Of History I, Drina Valley (Near Srebrenica), Bosnia and Herzegovina, 2022
There Were Sunny Days, Pobude (Near Srebrenica), Bosnia and Herzegovina, 2022
In 2018 the photographer was working in Rwanda when a mass-grave was discovered, twenty-four years after the genocide. Upon arriving at the excavation site and seeing the piles of clothes belonging to the victims, he decided to photograph the items as individual portraits to try and rehumanize them. “As each piece was carefully laid out, still damp from the earth, I found myself imagining that person’s story.”
“How We See The World” and “The Day I Became Another Genocide Victim” are on view at the Deepest Darkest Gallery booth of Paris Photo until December 13.
