From Camera Obscura. The Vilnius Ghetto, photo by John Batho

IKONA GALLERY presents the exhibition “From Camera Obscura. The Vilnius Ghetto, photo by John Batho”, opening during the International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

When Vilnius was conquered by Germans in 1941, in the city were built two jewish ghettoes; the second one survived until 1943. In this year inhabitants try to rise up but they failed and the ghetto was destroyed.

The black and white work by John Batho (pioneer of color photo) was realized by the artist in Vilnius in1998 in the place where there was the ghetto.

The negatives displays a desert ghetto as a relic of the past, materializing the silence and the white light that Batho saw during his travel. With the same idea of light, in “Présents & Absents” (1998), Batho photographs people moving in front of the camera obscura cabin, evoking the absence and the presence of an indelible sign in spite of the life that pass by.

In the Campo del Ghetto Nuovo are also on show from April 25, 1980 “Holocaust Monument” and from September 19, 1993 “Last train”, works by the Lithuanian artist Arbit Blatas.