12:12pm Wednesday 13th January 2010
By Graham Moody
With Holocaust Memorial Day taking place across the country on January 27, two artists have come together to present a new exhibition at Croydon Clocktower this month.
Photographer Marion Davies' Absence and Loss and ceramic artist Jenny Stolzenberg's Forgive and Do Not Forget will be presented side by side in Space C, giving visitors a unique way of looking at the Holocaust from a different angle.
Davies' part of the exhibit, which opened on Friday, concentrates on memorials to the victims of the Holocaust that she photographed when visiting Berlin.
"My part is not a conventional memorial type exhibition," she says.
"It's based entirely on monuments and memorials I found in Berlin, where my family come from.
"That sparked off a bit of interest and I started wondering why some memorials are bigger than others and I started photographing them.
"I realised that in a way they told part of the story of what happened.
"I also realised there were memorials to other groups of people so I began talking to and interviewing people like Jehovah's Witnesses.
"The exhibition therefore is not just about jews, there are bits about what happened to others too."
Davies' exhibition has toured internationally over the last four years and has been displayed in places like the Holocaust Museum in Cape Town and the Goethe Institute.
This will be the second time she has presented her work alongside Stolzenberg's exhibition, rows of glazed and fired ceramic shoes which are replicas of the footwear left behind by holocaust victims when the camps were liberated, and the pair will be presenting a talk together at the Museum on Monday.
"It's nice to be doing something with someone and it works quite well together," says Davies.
"We will talk about our own personal approaches and experiences as well as a bit of a background to them.
"I don't have a favourite photograph as such it's more of a place that struck me the most.
"I took a photograph at a train station where people got deported to concentration camps and on the edge of the platform there's a strip of metal.
"On it they have written the date the train left, where it was going and how many people were on it.
"In the picture you can see houses all around and it just struck me that all this was happening in a very suburban train station with people living close by."
The talk takes place in the Clocktower cafe at 5pm on Monday.
Absence and Loss/Forgive and Do Not Forget, Space C, Croydon Clocktower, Katharine Street, January 13 to 30, 10.30am to 5.30pm, free. Call 020 8253 1030 or visit croydonclocktower.org.uk.
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