Fifty years have passed since the world became aware of the atrocities committed in Nazi camps at various places in Europe during World War II.  Time has provided a resolve to move forward, to heal the pain and suffering of families and friends directly impacted by the horrific events and their byproducts.  But the need to keep alive an awareness of this past in order to prevent reoccurrences is always a part of our present.  This resolve to remember can be witnesses through the Lore Degenstein Gallery’s current exhibition of photography by Michael Kenna, whose twelve-year project documenting thirty Nazi concentration camps reignites the public’s awareness of these sites of genocide. From a period of repeated visits to these camps from 1998 through 2000, Kenna made several thousand images, eighty-eight of which have been selected for view in an exhibition responding to the artist’s feeling that the scenes he witnessed were “impossible to forget.”  He had been initially inspired by seeing a haunting photograph of a mountain of shaving brushes from Auschwitz produced by a fellow student of the Banbury School of Art in England where Kenna was studying art. Though Kenna was born in a generation after the War, he reflected upon the initial emotional impact of the Holocaust by developing a photographic project to study it in further detail.  He has returned repeatedly to Auschwitz, Sachsenhausen, Dachau, Ravensbruck, Buchenwald, and other camps to photograph the mood and spirit of that which had taken place in the past, Born in England in 1953, Kenna moved to San Francisco in 1981.  While having no direct encounter with personal or familial histories of the Holocaust, he found the subject compelling for his work in photography.  His images are initially benign, reflections of their history rather than illustrations of the atrocities.  The responsibility of remembrance lies with the viewer who must bring to the haunting images a knowledge of those crimes against humanity that were committed at the sites and with the implements shown.  To some degree, the fact that they resist graphic encounter is more compelling in that it requires responsibility from the viewer. The exhibition of Kenna’s photographs was organized by Patrimoine Photographique, Paris, with the support of the French Ministry of Culture.  With appreciation to the Charles B. Degenstein Endowment for the Gallery’s programs, the Lore Degenstein Gallery has the privilege of showing the exhibition through the efforts of the artist and Curatorial Assistance Traveling Exhibitions, Los Angeles.  An additional partner to this exhibition must also be acknowledged:  The Jewish Studies, who arranged for Dr. Barbie Zelizer of the University of Pennsylvania, author of Remembering to Forget:  Holocaust Memory Through the Camera’s Eye, to speak at the opening reception. Dr. Valerie Livingston   Victims' Shoes, Lublin-Majdanek, Poland, Michael Kenna, Gelatin silver print, 1993, 24 x 20" (detail)