Projects

A Life’s View Shaped by Childhood Trauma

A children’s bedroom finished with wallpaper adorned with opulent roses in a sparsely furnished old house in a hamlet in Southern Germany. This was the post-World War II sanctuary for my mother, my siblings, and myself. Untold times I gazed at the profusion of roses – counterweight to the nightmares of escape, hunger, deprivation, and incarceration in a French concentration camp in Alsace.

I emigrated to the United States in 1960. A few years after studying Fine Art at the School of Visual Arts in New York, I turned to photography. With unbending determination I set out to capture the overwhelming beauty and wealth of New York City as well as the plight of the neglected and forgotten, the inequities, and the horror of September 11 (an event that triggered childhood memories in me).

With equal urgency I explored my life with my husband (a Holocaust survivor) and my grief after his unexpected death in a series of self-portraits, titled “Thinking of the Future.” More recently, I have been coming to terms with my German legacy and family roots in “Homage to My Mother,” a work in progress.