In This Place |The Massacre at Oradour-sur-Glane
In This Place explores the sites of massacres committed by the Nazis against innocent civilians during the French occupation of World War II. Shown are images that remain today of the massacre of 642 men, women and children at Oradour-sur-Glane.
Left as a living monument to Nazi atrocities committed during 1944 in South-Western France, Oradour-sur-Glane has been consciously elevated to a sacred national remembrance space. This has taken place both within the landscape at the site of the atrocity, as well as within French national consciousness through annual remembrance ceremonies and the building of a dedicated national memory and educational centre.
Katharina Schramm, in her work on the meaning and memories associated with landscapes of violence, describes how ‘special attention and symbolic value can deem a landscape sacred. Oradour is now such a place and is intimately bound up within French National identity.
The work was shot during 11 days in France on medium format film. Each image is evidence of a particular aspect of the atrocity. The Church where women and children were burnt alive, the various sheds where men were gunned down, their bodies burnt to hide the evidence. It has been hard to read the testimonies.
