Techniques - Multiple Exposure

Artist Research - Nick Waplington

Nick Waplington

Nick Waplington traveled extensively during his childhood as his father worked as a scientist in the nuclear industry, but grew up in London during London’s post punk era, skateboarding at the Southbank Centre’s undercroft and creating his own fanzines

 studied art at West Sussex College of Art & Design in Worthing, Trent Polytechic in Nottingham and the Royal College of Art in London.

From 1984, Waplington regularly visited his grandfather on the Broxtowe Estate in Aspley, Nottingham, where he began to photograph his surroundings. Friends and neighbours of his family became his subject matter of choice. He continued with this work on and off for the next 15 years and from it came two books (Living Room and Weddings, Parties, Anything) and numerous exhibitions. Always looking for inspiration from the world around him, his intimate colour imagery was scorned by a traditional college faculty, but Nick characteristically broke convention when it exploded years later, the book contributing to the radical development of contemporary British photography.

His book "Other Edens" (1994) focused on environmental concerns and, although it was conceived and worked on at the same time as Living Room, was seen as a major departure in style and content. This work is global in nature and its ideas are ambiguous and multi-layered.

Waplington's work was included in the touring exhibition, The Dead, curated by Val Williams and Greg Hobson, which opened at the National Museum of Photography, Film & Television in 1995. 

The Patriarchs Wardrobe Series

Hebron, 

These photographs were taken in the land that was once called Palestine, on a landfill site south of the city of Hebron. The waste delivered to the landfill comes from Jewish Settlements in the Judea region of the West Bank. Before the waste is buried, it is scavenged for anything of worth by Palestinian children, working in groups for adult ‘handlers.’ It was agreed Waplington would work at a distance as not to reveal their identities.

The photographs are juxtaposed with paintings Waplington made of the landscape of the West Bank. Each painting represents a piece of this disputed land, and they are titled with a mixture of Hebrew and Arabic place names. They are based on colours caught by the photographs he shot while on location, and reworked in his studio. 

I really appreciate the truth and respect in Waplingtons photography, these peoples lives are a completely different world to that of myself and others in England. We are faced with luxuries we completely take for granted and it is images like these that have potential to make big change. Waplingtons comparative painting of the landscapes highlight how they brightest parts of the photos are the rubbish, which is quite heartbreaking and could metaphorically show how the most exciting part of their day is searching through landfill for valuable items.

Double Dactyl Series

Skegness, 2005

The word 'dactyl' comes from the Greek dactylos, a word with a mundane literal meaning: finger. In the technical language of poetic theory, however, a dactyl refers to a unit of rhythm that has three syllables, with the emphasis on the first (the long-short-short pattern resembling the joints of a finger). And yet this aesthetic terminology seems less pretentious when we realise that a double dactyl simply describes the rhythm of the artist's name: Nicholas Waplington. If the photographs in Double Dactyl are united by anything, they are united by Waplington's own multiplicity as an artist. His body of work could be described as a journey around the documentary, one that has prodded and played with notions of authenticity, authority and truth that conventionally define the genre. It could also be described as an experiment in doubleness. 

- http://www.nickwaplington.org/double-dactyl/4

This landscape shot depicts british people on a beach in Skegness in what I am assuming is the beginning of the summer of 2005. The Ice Cream truck is parked up on the side whilst families set their tents and blankets up. The composition is quite nice in this image with the metal barred fence just to the left of the centre of the image, creating a shadow on the sand that actually frames a persons feet at the end. I am guessing that Waplington used quite a low F.stop such as 2.8 to 5.6 for this shot as the image goes quite far back and remains in focus, besides a buggy with a little white umbrella in the forefront. I also assume that this image has been some what edited to brighten the image, something that Waplingtons photography is largely recognised for.

Settlement Series

Palestine

It is possible in January to stand in the moun- tains above the Palestinian city of Ramallah and watch the rainstorms moving across the Mediterranean towards the shimmering mass of towers that are Tel Aviv.... In the coming weeks the high desert mountains will change from scorched ferrous gold to bright green and purple and back to metallic hues. Somewhere in between everything is possible and everything is watched and noted, for here on the West Bank of the River Jordan every inch of land is known, recorded, and potentially a source of conflict.  

- http://www.nickwaplington.org/settlement/settlement9

This image depicts a small Palestinian girl sitting on a home made tree swing most likely out the front of her house. Waplington has positioned in the camera to ensure that the girl is completely central in the image, most likely crouching on the ground for the shot. The sunlight behind the trees creates some lovely romantic kind of lighting and shadows on the floor below the girl. We can see some small buildings in the distance but besides that and her house next to her on the right, this feels like a quiet and peaceful area which is ironic considering the potential conceived ideas and stereotypes about Palestine and Israel. 

The way that this image has been shot creates an idea that this girl is an angel. Palestine is a religious country with large amounts of Muslims and Jews so this image could be relating to religion in some way. The little girl is dressed in all white, with a headband and her arms out. The head band could symbolise a halo whilst her arms appear like wings. The hoop around her emphasises her importances and makes her seem significant, additionally the way she is swinging in the air is like she is flying, the sunlight behind her emphasises it all and creates a heavenly effect. 

Living Room Series

Nottingham, 1987-1991

Waplington's "Living Room" series, completed between 1987 and 1991, invites viewers into untidy, crowded, noisy lives. We enter the bathroom, the kitchen, the lawn, and, of course, the living room, although ultimately every room becomes a "living room." A review of the "Living Room" series in the Village Voice said, "Such intimate social realism makes you think it must take exceptional people, on both sides of the camera, to achieve such a degree of osmosis.

- http://www.philamuseum.org/exhibitions/1992/529.html

This image depicts three little girls, all in matching outfits out on their front lawn with hoovers, imitating hoovering or lawn mowing perhaps. The composition is nice as the girl as the front with her hoover almost frames the two girls slightly behind , the image was most likely shot with a film camera and this is why the colours aren't completely natural. I am guessing that Waplington crouched to get this shot as he is in eye contact view with the girls who are very small. 

Although the girls appear a bit scruffy, I wouldn't say that their parents don't care about their appearance as they are all in matching dresses which is quite nice. The fact that the girls have hoovers is quite stereotypical and links back to the ideas about Nuclear families in which the father is the breadwinner and the mother takes care of the children and the housework. Perhaps these sex specific roles something that the girls have picked up and are copying as they probably see their mother as a role model wishing to follow in her footsteps.

Influence:

Above is one of my best images from shoot 1, and a shot from Nick Waplingtons "Living Room" series which was the main inspiration behind this particular shoot. I focused on the closeness and intimacy of family, shown in this shot, with everyone sitting around a table together having a chat. This is a similar idea to Waplingtons image shown above, with everyone sitting down facing each other. There are some differences in the contexts behind these images though, as Waplingtons photography focuses on poverty England, depicting untidy, crowded and noisy lives. This is something that my images can't relate to. They are much calmer and tidier, however this is obviously something that I can't change. This particular style of documentary photography is what I am focusing on the most. The compositions are similar in both of these images, as both have focused on framing devices, although whilst shooting Waplington has tilted his camera whilst mine is straight. There is something that makes these images products of their time, Waplingtons image is clearly very 80's/90's with the clothing and the furniture etc. My shot is quite modern in regards to fashion and home decor. A slight difference in these images though is the colours. I edited my images with the idea to imitate film cameras with a tinted colour and partial lack of saturation, Waplingtons shot seems to have a lot of bright reds on some of the clothing and the furniture making his over all image appear much brighter. 

Summary:

Over all I find the work of Nick Waplington both aesthetically pleasing and contextually moving, his work makes a strong statement about family and relationships in a very natural way. I feel that his work inspires me to capture the essence of the moment in family life and shoot what may appear to be weird or unusual things in a very natural way. 

Techniques - Camera controls

Main F.stops:

The main f stops in your camera are 2.8,4.0, 5.6, 8,11,16,22, 32.  for each increase in f stop value the amount of light entering the camera is reduced by a half.

Shutter speed.

Measured in fractions of a second.

1/500s  1/250s  1/125s  1/60  s, 1/30s  1/15s,  1/8s,  ¼s,  ½s,      1”    2”  4”….

Note: reducing the shutter speed from 1/60th of a second to 1/30th increases the amount of  light exposure by a factor of 2.

The numbers highlighted in orange would begin to present some blur in the image.

Advanced lighting techniques

•WHAT IS SLOW SYNC FLASH?

•Slow sync flash is just a fancy term for using your flash with a slow shutter speed. It helps you keep your subject sharp while capturing motion or a dark background. That's it. Simple, isn't it?

•You see, with a normal flash photo, the shutter is only open for a fraction of a second, so the flash is firing for most of your exposure.

•With a long exposure, your camera's shutter is open for much longer than the flash is firing - perhaps even several seconds.

•You can choose whether you want to fire the flash at the start or end of the exposure.

•Firing the flash at the start of the exposure is known as "front curtain" or "1st curtain". Firing it at the end is known as "rear curtain"

Relationship between shutter speed and aperture.

These are some images I shot in the studio capturing blur and movement. 

Shutter speed: 8 F.stop: 

Artist research - Richard Billingham

Richard Billingham

An artist I have been inspired and heavily influenced by Is Richard Billingham.

Born 25 September 1970, Richard Billingham is an English photographer and artist, film maker and art teacher. His work has mostly concerned his family, the place he grew up in the West Midlands, but also landscapes elsewhere.

Billingham has published the monographs Ray's a Laugh (1996), Black Country (2003), Zoo(2007), and Landscapes, 2001-2003 (2008). He made the full length video film Fishtank (1998) as well as various shorts, and wrote and directed Ray (2016), part 1 of a 3-part feature film. He is best known for Ray's A Laugh which documents the life of his alcoholic father Ray, and obese, heavily tattooed mother, Liz.

He won the 1997 Citibank Private Bank Photography Prize (now Deutsche Börse Photography Prize) and was shortlisted for the 2001 Turner Prize. His work is held in the permanent collections of Tate, the Victoria and Albert Museum, and Government Art Collection in London. Billingham is based in Swansea and teaches art at Gloucester and Middlesex universities.

Billingham shot his photos with a film camera for the "Ray's a laugh" series as he had no other choice, but told me himself that he still prefers to use film rather than digital. I decided to email Richard Billingham to ask him some question about photography and the "Ray's a laugh" series. Here is my email and his response: 

This image was shot in 1994 with a film camera, which we can guess from the pinkish tint in the image. This shot depicts Billinghams mother, Liz, laying on the sofa and watching TV. She appears very comfortable in this setting. It is clear that this image is a product of its time with the 90's style of sofa, wallpaper and clothing. Liz seems unfazed by this image being taken, and is obviously used to it, giving it the essence of a true documentary photo. Without knowing contextual information, we can guess that this is depicting a working class family. We can assume this by the setting, one of the pillows are ripped and broken, Liz appears unkempt and her clothing is unfashionable suggesting that money is tight and these things are not a priority. This image also suggests that Liz is somewhat of an independent woman as she can enjoy her own company, perhaps she is busy, often taking care of her alcoholic husband Ray and rarely gets a moment to herself. So it is nice for her to relax on the sofa for a moment.

This image was shot in 1995 and shows Ray and Liz eating their dinner together on the sofa. This image was also clearly shot on a film camera leaving a green tint on the image. Billingham is really relying on the decisive moment for his documentary shots, capturing the life of a working class family, in poverty England, perfectly. This image actually says quite a lot about the family. The fact that they are eating their dinner on the sofa suggests that they are quite informal and not really bothered by mess or dirt. Additionally, they are eating with animals beside them which emphasises this idea. Ray is blinking in this image whilst Liz is looking straight faced and probably watching the TV while eating her dinner. She does seem quite tired and from this we can assume that she has been taking care of Ray and most likely cooked the dinner for the family. The married couple are sitting quite a distance apart and this could suggest emotional distance as well, but we cannot know this for sure just from one image.

This image was shot in 1996 and depicts a frail looking Ray, happily receiving some boiled eggs from Liz. This image appears quite a bit brighter than the previous two images, this could be something to do with progression in photography, or perhaps has just been edited with some white balance. I like the composition in this image, with ray on the sofa in the bottom right and Liz towering over him, being framed by some ornaments on the wall behind her. The fact that Liz is towering over Ray suggests that she is the matriarch of the family, and a strong figure in the household. She is clearly the main care giver, taking care of Ray who appears to getting old and fragile as the alcohol gets the best of him. She seems calm and content in this role, and Ray is very happy being taken care of. The house still seems messy with a broken cardboard box on the sofa beside Ray. Also, I can assume that there is lots of dog hair in the house from the two dogs sitting on the sofa.

This fourth image was shot in 1995, and depicts Billinghams younger brother sitting on a garden chair, holding a baby girl. This image particularly emphasises the family's money situation as it is unusual to sit on a garden chair in the living room. Although this appears normal for Billingham's brother. Although the baby is crying, the young man seems comfortable holding her, supporting her head as she is sitting up. From the research that I have done, Billingham mentions his younger brother being lazy, and quitting every job he gets after two weeks, although it is a strong stereotype for working class people to be lazy so this wouldn't be unusual for most viewers. The composition in this image is quite nice, as the two are framed nicely within the green wall behind them, filling the empty space there is also a nice depth of field ensuring that Billinghams brother and the baby are the main focus of the image. 

Influence:

Below is one of Richard Billinghams pictures compared to mine, showing the influence on my work.

Above is one of my best images from my shoot 1, and although the main photographer influence for this shoot was Nick Waplington, I had also been looking at a lot of Richard Billinghams work and particularly the way that his images come out with slight tinted colours due to shooting with film, I wanted to create this same style despite shooting in digital. These two images are similar in composition and subject, depicting two family members sitting beside each other indulged in something in front of them, in Billinghams photography this is usually Liz or Ray watching the television, in my shot they are focused on the conversation. By coincidence they even have their legs crossed like Ray in the image above. Both of these images purposely don't present the peoples lives as glamorous and show people as they truly are in the moment just living their everyday lives. 

Contextual and critical analysis

This is a photo taken my Mendel Grossman. He was a Jewish Photographer in the Lodz ghetto. When Grossman first began taking photos he believed it was an art. He would photograph flowers, still life, landscapes, street scened and portraits. When the war began Grossman decided he needed to take photographs of the tragedy that was happening in order to document what was going on. He took a lot of photos of his family and showed their suffering gradually getting worse. He recorded the Hollocaust at its intensity. Grossman would keep his hands in his pocket and cut a hole inside. He would direct the camera by turning in the direction he wanted to photograph. During the war Grossman hid a lot of his images in tin cans hoping to recover them after the war was over however he was shot during the Hollocaust and was not able to do so.  

Denotation

This image is of two Jewish children. One is dressed up as a guard or soldier and the other is dressed in basic clothes. One of the children is holding a baton however I believe this is a stick which represents a baton. The photo is also in black and white. There is a fence in the background of the image. 

Connotation

The fact that the photographer has chosen to photograph children could have connotations of how due to what is going on young children are forced to understand the things that are going on and forced to grow up although they are still just very young. The idea that one child is dressed in a uniform and the other is dressed in basic clothes represents that children are taught there should be a divide between people. Also the idea that the child is holding a stick which could represent a baton could have connotations of authority and aggression. This may also represent that children would feel as though aggression was okay because it was happening all around them as they were growing up. The photo being in black and white emphasises the idea that this was taken a long time ago and emphasises the context of when the photo was taken, during WW2. I think that the fence in the background in the image could have connotations of Jewish people being trapped and restricted in one place. This could also have connotations of the way Jewish people were treated in WW2.     

Punctum

The punctum for me within this image is the child's face, standing on the right. The idea that the boy is smirking could represent that he doesn't fully understand what he is acting out and doesn't fully understand the ideas behind what he is doing. This suggests to me that the child just wants to have fun however doesn't realise what is really happening. 

Studium

Two going boys role playing. 

Mendel Grossman

The Lodz Ghetto Photographer     

Mendel Grossman with his camera in the Lodz Ghetto

Mendel Grossman was a Jewish photographer in the Lodz (Litzmannstadt) ghetto, born in 1913. He was a slim man of less than average height with sloping shoulders, his coat hanging on him as if it were not cut to his size, even his shoes appearing too large for him.

His eyes expressed goodness, a clever smile played on his lips, his steps were measured and he always carried a stuffed briefcase.  That was Mendel Grossman, a young man of a Hasidic family, the type of a former Talmudic student who had left the straight and narrow path. He was avid for knowledge, a lover of literature, the theatre and the arts, a painter, a sculptor, and also an amateur photographer who believed that photography was an art.

His photographs flowers, still-life, landscapes, street scenes, portraits, taken against the background of clouds, were works of art filled with expression, leaving strong impressions on the viewer. Eventually Mendel Grossman began to concentrate on one subject – man in motion. The transition came abruptly, and by accident. The Habimah theatre was visiting Lodz and Mendel hidden in the wings, photographed the performances.

No one asked him to do it he did it for himself alone. Here were men and women in motion, in classical motion there was dancing, varied and strange facial expressions, laughter, fear, pain, as well as make-up, costumes, light, stage settings.

Jews relocate to the Baluty section of the Lodz Ghetto

When later he locked himself in his darkroom to develop the films he was astonished by the power of his photographs, he actually succeeded in arresting men in motion. All those who saw the pictures extolled their excellence, but Mendel knew that he was only at the beginning of this particular journey.

Habimah left, and Mendel directed his lens to the street, to the suburbs inhabited by Jews, the slums. He now found motion and expression not on the stage, but in the streets, among children playing, labourers at work in the Jewish quarter of Baluty.

His photographs gained a measure of respect, and Mendel achieved recognition as an artist- photographer. In the beginning of 1939, the management of TOZ, the Jewish organisation for the protection of children’s health, approached him with an attractive proposition – to prepare an album of pictures of Jewish children.

The accent was to be on the poor Jewish child in the streets. Mendel enthusiastically accepted the proposition and was soon ready with a series of photographs. It was the summer of 1939, the album never appeared and the photographs got lost in the war, and at the same time so did their subjects the Jewish child.

Jewish children in Lodz photographed by Grossman

The idyllic life of discussions on art ceased with the outbreak of war and the first contact with a brutal occupier, then the Star of David to denote a Jew, and the creation of ghettos. Mendel was ready with his camera. No longer did he photograph flowers, clouds, still life’s and landscapes. In the horror of the Lodz ghetto he had found his mission, to photograph and thus record the great tragedy taking place in the ghetto before his eyes.

Mendel Grossman knew how to photograph, he knew how to observe and perceive what happened around him, and what is most important – he saw the people surrounding him. He photographed them in their suffering, as they sank into the depths of pain, in their struggles, in their illnesses, and in their death.

He recorded with his camera what took place in the tortured ghetto, the Holocaust at its intensity.

He gave up his artistic ambitions of the past, his mission was now clear, to leave to the world – if a world was to remain – a tangible testimony of the great tragedy, of the horrible crime, in a language understood by all nations.

Evicted from his house in the centre of town, Mendel found a flat in the ghetto where he settled with his parents, two sisters, brother –in-law and little nephew. The story of his family is typical of Jewish families in Lodz. Mendel realised this, and intensively photographed his loved ones, so that over the years he created a horrifying record of their slow progress toward death.

Mendel Grossman's sister and her son queue for rations

Mendel obtained a job in the photographic laboratory of the department of statistics in the ghetto, the office in which all the true information concerning the ghetto was collected. Covered by its official status, the staff of the department accumulated written material.

They did not only record dry facts, as statisticians usually do, but wrote down every rumour passing through the ghetto, every change in the distribution of food rations, every event no matter how unimportant. They also collected photographs, ostensibly to demonstrate models of products of the ghetto workshops, and identification photographs for work permits. The laboratory had a good supply of film and printing paper, and also served as an ideal camouflage for Mendel’s real job.

He spent most of his time in the streets, in the narrow alleys, in homes, in soup kitchens, in bread lines, in workshops, at the cemetery. The chief subject was people. He did not seek beauty, for there was no beauty in the ghetto, there were children bloated with hunger, eyes searching for a crust of bread, living “death notices” as those near death, but still on their feet were called in ghetto slang.

He photographed conveys of men and women condemned to death in the gas-vans of Chelmno, public executions, in one incident, a whole family passed through the street dragging a wagon filled with excrement, a father, mother, son and daughter, the parents in front pulling, and the children pushing from the sides.

Saying goodbye to children held at the Lodz ghetto prison before they were deported to Chelmno in Sept 1942

Mendel stopped but did not take out his camera, he hesitated to photograph the degradation of those people. But the head of the family halted and asked Mendel to photograph, “Let it remain for the future, let others know humiliated we were.” Mendel no longer hesitated, he gave into the urge which motivated so many Jews to leave a record, to write down the events, to collect documents, to scratch a name on the wall of the prison cell, to write next to the name of the condemned the word “vengeance.”

Mendel had heart trouble and he was forbidden to make any physical effort. The Gestapo was also on his tracks and his friends warned him, his family insisted that he stop endangering his life. But he did not heed any warnings, no event in the ghetto passed without him photographing it. To fool the police he carried his camera under his coat.

He kept his hands in his pockets, which were cut open inside, and he thus could manipulate the camera. He directed the lens by turning his body in the direction he wanted, then slightly parted his coat, and clicked the shutter. This method worked very well.

Jews executed by hanging in Lodz as the crowd watches

In one of the stages of the destruction of the Jewish people the Germans deported the remnants of the Jewish communities of Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia and Luxemburg, and brought them to the Lodz ghetto. Mendel received the arrivals with camera in hand. Here were characters of a new kind, with a different appearance, different manners. They were well dressed, they carried heavy suitcases, were well provided with food.

They were horror stricken at the sight of the ghetto, they refused contact with the old inhabitants of the ghetto whose appearance repelled them. They tried to swim against the current and quickly gave up, they collapsed spiritually and physically.

Mendel and his camera followed this process which ended when the Germans collected the pitiful remnants and again loaded them onto trains, this time the trains were bound for Chelmno. Mendel after taking a long distance photo, hidden in a room overlooking Bazarny Square of an execution of a Jew from Vienna, who had been arrested outside of the ghetto, was able to photograph another execution close up.

On a cloudy day he again ventured out with his camera this time to an open field on Marysinska Street. Unlike the first time, Mendel did not take up a protected position, but stood behind a German policeman, in the front row of the crowd.

As usual the camera was suspended from a strap around his neck, the coat was slightly parted, and his hands under the coat directed the lens to the scaffold. The condemned young man, was brought in a cart. He still did not realise what was going to happen to him. He noticed at first a large crowd, and then the dangling noose. Now he knew. Without uttering a sound he ascended the scaffold, his head down.

Grossman in his photo lab in Lodz

The crowd held its breath, the distant cries of the condemned man’s wife also ceased. The German’s were tense as the hangman tightened the noose around the victim’s neck. Mendel clicked the shutter, the silence was so absolute that even this muted sound reached the ears of a German policeman, and he turned his head.

Pale with excitement, Mendel returned to the small darkroom in his flat to develop the picture. This time the photograph was clear in every detail.

Still Mendel thought that he should change his technique, from then on he climbed electric power posts to photograph a convoy of deportees on their way to the trains, he walked roofs, climbed the steeple of a church that remained within the confines of the ghetto in order to photograph a change of guard at the barbed-wire fence.

Weak and sick, he found it difficult to accomplish all those feats, but he was contemptuous of danger and did not heed the pleadings of friends. Inside the church he discovered a strange world – a surrealistic picture which could be only the product of morbid fantasy – the entire interior was covered with a thick layer of white feathers.

Waves of feathers rose into the air with each step, each movement. Every breeze caused a cloud of feathers to form in the air. The altar of carved wood, the figures of the saints, and the huge organ – all were covered with feathers, all undulated in the breeze.

Amidst all that he saw human figures, also wrapped in white, sitting, running around, standing. A small sign attached to the entrance attempted to explain what was happening inside. It read Institute for Feather Cleaning, but the sign did not tell the whole truth. The Church was the place to which the bedding robbed from Jews who were sent to death from Lodz and surrounding towns was being brought.

Mendel Grossman works on a photo album in the Lodz Ghetto

There, in the Church of the Virgin Mary, the pillows and featherbeds were ripped open by Jewish men and women, then the feathers were cleaned, sorted, packed and shipped to Germany, to merchants who sold them in the Reich.

Mendel spent many weeks in the church, covered with feathers. He looked for varied angles which would fully explain to future generations what was happening in that church. He created evidence of the crime, the full extent of which was not yet known to him. Only his intuition told him that this must be recorded.

The collection of negatives grew from day to day its contents became richer and more varied. The negatives were hidden in round tin cans, among them a can full of negatives from the performances of Habimah in Lodz in 1938.

Mendel again and again stressed in conversations with friends that he expected those negatives eventually to reach Tel Aviv and be given to the theatre. He did not speak of the plans for the future - he only wanted his photographs to be exhibited as testimony of what took place in the ghetto.

  

The desire to record, to record at all costs, had become part of the consciousness of the inhabitants of the ghetto. All parts of the community had become permeated by this desire, and Mendel with his camera was received with open arms and with full understanding, in workshops, in hospitals, in orphanages, in offices, in the streets.

In 1942 the Germans announced a new deportation from the ghetto and the Gestapo and members of the Kripo went from house to house selecting Jews for death. Dead bodies were collected and thrown on a heap in the cemetery. Mendel decided he need to record these events, Mendel attached himself to the gravediggers and went to the cemetery, with his camera in his hand.

Station at Radegast

Carts continued to bring in bodies but Mendel first turned his attention to the open mass grave, inside were deportees from the nearby town Zdunska Wola. They had died of suffocation in the tightly packed trains.

Mendel managed to take photographs before the gravediggers did their job of covering the evidence. Then with his slow steps he went to the hall reserved for memorials but which was now filled with bodies. From the distance the sound of rifle fire was heard, the “aktion” continued.

While photographing, Mendel marked the chests with numbers. The same numbers later appeared on the graves, and thus the families were able to identify the graves by first identifying their dead on the photographs.

The head of each body was lifted by a gravedigger, and Mendel went from one to another clicking, recording the bruised, bloody, crushed faces, faces of old people, of boys, of girls. Some of the eyes were closed, some half open, some half open, some stared with fear, some exuded the serenity of death.

The great deportation “aktion” was about to end, Mendel still managed to photograph the large wagons full of Jews condemned to death as they made their way to the concentration  places and from there to the railway station at Radegast. Again the trains rolled in the direction of Chelmno and the gas-vans and crematoria of “Sonderkommando Bothman” worked at full speed.

Forced deportations of families from Lodz

There followed “regular” days in the ghetto, and one could find Mendel in the streets and ghetto institutions, his lens directed toward the starving and the sick who were not allowed to be sick because there was no room for them in the ghetto, and therefore all medical institutions were liquidated. They remained only in Mendel’s photographs.

In 1943 deportations began again, the inhabitants of the ghetto still did not know to where the deportees were being taken. There were many rumours, most of them pessimistic, but some contained grains of hope.

Mendel sensed that the omens were bad, he suspected the Germans of taking the deportees to a place from which there was no return. He photographed almost exclusively the convoys, the places where the deportees were concentrated, the ghetto jail. Friends warned him against photographing the convoys, because Gestapo men were among the guards, and they would find him out. Again he heeded no warnings. In one of the ghetto workshops, a telescopic lens was being secretly constructed for him according to a sketch he prepared.

When completed, the lens performed satisfactorily, but was heavy and awkward to carry, Mendel was happy, because he could now photograph from a distance and from hiding places. He photographed the convoys from windows, following them until the deportees entered the death trains. He was in great danger when photographing the railroad station with the German police pushing the Jews into the trains.

He took the photographs hidden behind a stack of slabs of concrete belonging to a factory of prefabricated houses. The new lens did its work well.  Mendel showed particular interest in recording the activities of youth organisations in the ghetto. He appeared at meetings, photographed events.

Grossmans father (sick) in the Lodz Ghetto

All was open to him, the young people trusted him and Mendel discovered suddenly smiling faces, faith in the future, and care for fellow men. There were no longer orphanages and old people’s homes in the ghetto, and so he photographed the children in the workshops to which the entire population was mobilised.

Mendel infiltrated the parties of the ghetto elite, photographed their shameful mode of living, which was a mockery of the sufferings of the starving population. Many of Mendel’s pictures showed the institutions of the ghetto authorities. They stressed the bitter irony of the “autonomy” given to the Jews within the barbed-wire fence, the empty paraphernalia, offices, police, parades and uniforms.

He generously distributed copies of his photographs, he asked for no payments he let the pictures be kept by as many people as possible. Perhaps some would remain after the holocaust. Mendel spent his evenings locked in his darkroom, working till late at night. In the mornings he distributed prints among friends and acquaintances and kept only the negatives for himself.

He kept next to his enlarging apparatus a little crystal set with an earphone which was capable of receiving only the German radio station in Lodz. Thus he was informed on the progress of the war, but he did not indulge in commenting on the subject. His drawers were full of tin cans with more than then thousand negatives, the result of hard and stubborn work since the occupation. Those cans contained the images of people whose ashes were already scattered in the forests of Chelmno.

Station at Konigs Wusterhausen

In them was the story of the suffering and destruction of a great Jewish community, the most telling proof of the greatest crime in human history. With the Red Army advancing on the eastern front, Mendel knew that he must now hide his precious negatives in a safe place. Mendel made a quick selection of negatives, packed the tin cans in a wooden crate.

With the help of a friend he took out a window sill in his apartment, removed some bricks, placed the crate in the hollow, then replaced the sill. The task was accomplished. The negatives seemed safe for the future. But Mendel retained his camera. The days of the Lodz ghetto final liquidation came, there was chaos everywhere, Mendel continued to photograph to the very end. He could no longer develop the film, the ghetto was almost empty.

Trains left twice a day for an unknown destination, one of the last to leave was Mendel, his camera hidden under his coat. Several days later the Gestapo found out about his activities when they found in some abandoned flats prints of his photographs – the definitive proof of their own crimes. Mendel was sent to the Konigs Wusterhausen labour camp, in the Reich where he secretly continued photographing, but not developing and printing.

One of several GFH publications

When, the war front advanced and came closer, and the prisoners of the camp were taken out on the death march, Grossman collapsed and died with his camera on him. The negatives of his photographs hidden by him in the ghetto, were found by Mendel’s sister and sent to Israel, but most of them were lost during the War of Independence, when Egyptian troops captured the Nitzanim kibbutz.

One of Mendel’s closest friends Nahman Zonabend remained in the Lodz ghetto until its liberation. Although the Nazis kept him under constant surveillance, he succeeded in saving the archives of the Judenrat, and he concealed the documentary treasure, including some of Mendel’s photographs, at the bottom of a well.

After the war this material was taken out of Poland. The archives were collected and are now housed in the Museum of Holocaust and Resistance at the Ghetto Fighters House in Kibbutz Lohamei Hagetaot Israel. 

Also the photographs taken by Mendel Grossman were used in the book With a Camera in the Ghetto, published in America in 1977.