Berlin-based, Israeli artist Shahak Shapira has something to show you. It’s selfies, mostly of young people, taken at the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin. No wait: It’s horrific images of hundreds of corpses piled carelessly in fields and shallow trenches. It’s both, actually.
His image collages, which combine the grim realities of 6 million dead Holocaust victims with our current penchant for self-documenting regardless of the occasion or setting, make their point pretty quickly. The results sort of beg the question: “What part of this horrifies me the most?”
The work is presented on a site the artist calls, fittingly, the Yolocaust.
On the Yolocaust’s FAQ, Shapira writes, “About 10,000 people visit the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe every day. Many of them take goofy pictures, jump, skate or bike... the selfies were found on Facebook, Instagram, Tinder, and Grindr.” Though he suggests that, “It’s up to you how to keep a memorial site that marks the death of 6 million people,” the project itself implies some sense of judgment of the behavior of the yoga-posing selfie takers.
If the subjects of the photos take issue with the portrayal, the artist does provide an email address — undouche.me@yolocaust.de — for requests that the images be removed.
