Auschwitz Birkenau

Shortly before the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi concentration and extermination camp Auschwitz-Birkenau, Juergen Teller, Dovile Drizyte and Gerhard Steidl travelled there at the invitation of Christoph Heubner, writer and Executive Vice President of the International Auschwitz Committee. They spent days walking through the memorial sites, and Teller photographed what he saw: barracks and tracks that seemingly lead to infinity, gas chambers and latrines, electric fences, drawings, photos and messages documenting the lives of the prisoners and their deaths—but also mundane things such as parking signs and souvenirs stores, visitors and buses. Everything in these images has lost its innocence, even the grass, birch trees, berries, and winter sunlight streaming through windows. Each detail captured by Teller is a trace of the world of the victims and their perpetrators, part of the horror and reality of this 190-hectare death factory in which more than 1.1 million people, most of them Jews, were murdered. Teller’s photographs preserve what is there, past and present. In his text Heubner adds memories, quotes and impressions from his decades of encounters and conversations with survivors to a selection of the photos. Auschwitz Birkenau is a visual atlas, a compelling inventory.