Taber Gallery, Holyoke Community College, Holyoke, MA
IInstallation Views and Directions to Taber Gallery

February 21, 2008 through March 13, 2008
Gallery Hours : Monday-Thursday, 9am to 6pm

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Does a landscape have a memory? After sixty-two years, can that landscape hold the memory of human suffering? Can an artist capture those images of our collective memory of the Holocaust? These are some of the questions that have driven this photographic investigation into these places of horror. To find what remains.

This body of work began as a personal inquiry, followed by research in the spring of 2004. Using vintage Kodak Hawkeye Brownie cameras, dating from the late 1940's, photographer Sondra Peron traveled to a small town in Austria, on the north bank of the Danube River, called Mauthausen in August of 2004. Part of this installation and the accompanying book of photographs of Mauthausen were first exhibited at the Oresman Gallery, Smith College, in January 2005. This limited edition book is now part of the Smith College Rare Book Room as well as in private collections. Sondra returned to Europe in November of 2005 to continue work on the concentration camp series, as it seemed incomplete without visiting Dachau in Germany and Auschwitz in Poland.

Beginning in 1938 until its liberation by a division of the U.S. Third Army in May of 1945, Mauthausen was a working camp designed around the Weiner Graben Quarry, supplying stone for the building of roads and bridges to places as far away as Vienna and Budapest. The concentration camps in Dachau and Auschwitz represent a different, yet significant variation on the concentration camp system first designed by the Nazis. In the spring of 1933, Dachau became the first concentration camp and the template for all camps throughout Europe to follow. By 1942, the Nazis had marked all European Jews for extermination. Auschwitz became known as the center of mass destruction and calculated death. Although the majority of those killed were Jewish, Poles, Gypsies from several European countries, Soviet prisoners of war, homosexuals, among others, were also sent to Auschwitz. It is estimated that between 1940 and 1945 over 1.5 million people were led to the gas chambers in Auschwitz alone in the Third Reich's attempt to “cleanse” Europe.

The camps in Auschwitz, Dachau and Mauthausen represent a much larger extermination program that encompassed hundreds of satellite camps throughout Europe until the end of the Second World War. Unfortunately, use of the term “genocide” did not end with the fall of the Third Reich, atrocities have occurred in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia and Serbia. In the 21st century, the statement “never again” still seems elusive as populations in Darfur, a region in western Sudan, are currently being subjected to ethnic cleansing.

A special limited edition exhibition book called "Mauthausen"accompanies this exhibit. This edition of 10 signed and numbered, contain 17-pigmented photographs printed by the photographer and custom-bound and slip cased by bookbinder Shoshannah Wineburg. Recently featured in Smith College Alumnae Magazine. Link to article--click here.

Photographer Sondra Peron has produced a significant body of work using vintage cameras, most notably the Brownie Hawkeye manufactured by Kodak from the late 1940s to early 1960s. She holds two Associates degrees in fine arts and visual communications and graduated in 1998 as an Ada Comstock Scholar from Smith College with a degree in philosophy. Her work has been exhibited throughout New England, and is collected nationally and internationally. Art historian Mimi Hellman in her article, “Sondra Peron: Peripheral Vision’ stated, “Using an apparatus that lacks the acuity associated with both photographic sophistication and human power, Peron reveals the incisiveness of partial, fleeting, contingent vision and invites us to discover the uneasy pleasures of a world at the edge of visibility”.

Currently, Sondra Peron is an MFA candidate in photography at the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore. She lives in Northampton and works for the Northampton Arts Council.

May 2, 2008 is Holocaust Remembrance Day. Holocaust Remembrance Day is a day that has been set aside for remembering the victims of the Holocaust and for reminding Americans of what can happen to civilized people when bigotry, hatred and indifference reign. Link to US Holocaust Memorial Museum

For more information about Sondra Peron's photography, please contact her directly, 413-695-3196, or email sondraperon@comcast.net. High res photos available.

It is the mission of the Taber Art Gallery to provide a high quality visual arts venue with regularly changing exhibits, gallery talks, and other special related events; To feature (but not limited to) innovative and contemporary artists from the Western Massachusetts area; To hold an annual exhibition for the Holyoke Community College art students; To be welcoming and educational for not only the Holyoke Community College population, but for the community at large.

The Taber Gallery is a non-profit exhibition space, open to the public and conveniently accessed through the HCC Campus Library in the Donahue Building. For more information 413-552-2614.

This exhibition made possible by the Taber Gallery and Holyoke Community College. Additional funding provided by the Holyoke Cultural Council, a local agency supported in part by the Massachusetts Cultural Council and the Arts Angels.


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