September 11
Exhibition
I Once Had a Sweet Little Doll
Reflections on September 11, 2001
After the fall of the Berlin Wall, the collapse of the communist system, and the end of the Cold War, hopes for a more peaceful world seemed to be justified. The deadly arms race – whether conventional, nuclear, biological, or chemical – had become more senseless than ever. Yet, today our lives are overshadowed by worldwide unrest: religious and civil wars; the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction; terrorist attacks; and the constant fear of further such assaults.
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What will the future hold for our children and grandchildren? This burning question, intensified by the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, compelled me to reflect upon such catastrophic events in a photographic project. My own traumatic childhood experiences during World War II and its aftermath have further motivated me to a visual statement. I have used dolls as symbols of childhood innocence and defenselessness. Like the poem “The Lost Doll” by Charles Kingsley, my images are a metaphor for the loss of a peaceful, self-assured life that, until recently, we simply had taken for granted.
Technical Note about My Project:
“I Once Had a Sweet Little Doll” consists of 35 images (27 – 16 x 20 inches, 8 – 11 x 14 inches). These are analog black and white photographs that I hand-colored with oil paints. Some are collages for which I transferred newspaper headlines and pictures onto transfer paper and, from there, onto fabric. I then pasted the fabric details onto the colored photographs. I created these images from 2001 to 2006, and exhibited them in Weingarten, Germany, in September 2008.
2006 Anti-War Demonstration
Reviews
September 11 Memorial Museum
Digital Artist’s Registry at http://registry.national911memorial.org | Alexandra Drakakis, Curatorial Assistant | Email October 19, 2010:
“It is with great enthusiasm that I write to you on behalf of the curatorial division of the National 9/11 Memorial Museum in regard to your fascinating project, “I Once Had a Sweet Little Doll.” Thank you so much for sharing your images with us along with your artist’s statement, detailing the impetus behind this unique and compelling body of work. . . It would be a great honor to have ‘I Once Had a Sweet Little Doll’ as part of this online initiative.”
MCPA Dr. Helena Kane Finn Opens Exhibition Remembering 9-11
On September 7th, U.S. Minister-Counselor for Public Affairs Dr. Helena Kane Finn opened the photo exhibition "I Once Had a Sweet Little Doll - Reflections on September 11th" by Carin Drechsler-Marx in Weingarten/Württemberg. A New Yorker herself, Dr. Finn recalled the shock of the attacks in 2001 and highlighted the gratefulness of Americans for the displays of sympathy by German citizens who had laid flowers and lighted candles in front the U.S. Embassy and the consulates in Germany. She quoted two New Yorker writers who observed the situation in the city in the days following 9-11: "The wax from the candles dripped and flowed together as our differences seemed to melt away. New Yorkers came together in a public ritual that in its transcendence of any single belief system represented all of them."
Weingarten's Mayor Rainer Kapellen, who welcomed the guests, said he was deeply honored by the U.S. Embassy's recognition of Carin Drechsler-Marx's works. Cultural manager Manfred A. Konnes introduced the artist Carin Drechsler-Marx, who was born in Strasbourg and lived in Southern Germany until she emigrated to New York in 1960. In her art, Carin Drechsler-Marx expressed her feelings caused by the 9-11 tragedy. She used the dolls in her photographs as a symbol of vulnerability and childlike innocence.
Szon – Schwäbische Zeitung Online
Weingarten | September 11, 2008
WEINGARTEN - Dolls, the epitome of defenselessness and an intact world, the New York photographer Carin Drechsler-Marx confronts the terror of September 11, 2001 in her photo series "I Once Had a Sweet Little Doll". Strong images of the power of vulnerability, which brought the Kornhausgalerie a full house at the vernissage.
Four years ago, when Carin Drechsler-Marx offered her reflections on September 11, 2001 to New York galleries, they recognized the strong message of the pictures, but rejected an exhibition at that time. The wound was still too deep for Americans. The war "on the axis of evil" was still in progress. A show of their pictorial grief would be too unpatriotic and hence politically incorrect.
Thus her work found its way across the pond to her old home and as far as Weingarten, organized by Manfred Konnes, the former mayor of Wolfegg. The photographer had lived in Wolfegg for many years before she moved to the USA in 1960.
The exhibition "I Once Had a Sweet Little Doll" – the title refers to a poem by Charles Kingsley - shows 36 hand-tinted black and white photographs and collages. The viewer is immersed in a doll's panopticon, even in a doll's ghost train: dolls in free fall with 9/11 numbers. Dolls in front of newspaper clippings with the smoking towers of the fallen World Trade Center. Dolls with Saddam tattoos and Saddam shirts, or with a Bin Laden veil. And quite blatantly a doll picture with Osama and an American flag scarf.
A clash of cultures, presented in a unique, sometimes eerie aesthetics. In most of the staged photographs, the beautiful and the terrible are balanced. Not so with the doll babies burnt by the ash rain. The artist says that she deliberately used dolls as a symbol of childlike innocence and defenselessness, even though the hope for a peaceful coexistence is strongly overshadowed by wars, terror, armament and natural disasters.
Dr. Helena Kane Finn from the American Embassy in Berlin, had come specifically for the opening. She paid tribute to the constructive visual language of Carin Drechsler-Marx, which she contrasted with the destructive nature of this terrible attack. With this symbolism beyond the helpless cry, Dr. Kane Finn said, a confrontation with the horrors of this world is possible.
Also Weingarten's mayor Rainer Kapellen made it clear at the vernissage how important the discourse about our values is and what holds society together at its core. The exhibition by Carin Drechsler-Marx provided a good opportunity to talk about this topic again.