Ben Altman

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  • About/Contact
  • NEW
    • I Own This Stolen Land
  • INTRACTABLE HISTORIES
    • The More That Is Taken Away
    • Site/Sight
    • Seeing Memorials
    • Guantanámo Basement
    • Which Side Are You On
  • INVISIBLE HISTORIES
    • The Empty Centre
    • An Expatriate's Views
  • PLACE AND TIME
    • Memory Mechanism
    • Portraits/Interviews

Seeing Memorials/CONTINUE LOOP UNTIL

The pandemic led me to re-visit photographs I’ve made at memorials to epochal episodes of loss – military cemeteries and sites of genocide. It’s rare in such places to find the voices of families, those who bear the heaviest legacy. I saw eloquent but cryptic exceptions to this rule at the Sobibor Nazi death camp memorial, in Poland, and at WWII cemeteries in Normandy.

I’ve paired the former – modest, fairly recent but already corroding plaques, screwed to small rocks along a pine-forest path – with carefully-tended headstones from the latter. I chose twelve particular pairs because I found symmetry or synergy between the inscriptions, despite their very different backgrounds and contexts.

Each pair of prints is mounted on a sheet of heavy printmaking paper. They are fitted to rectangles debossed into the paper by means of an etching press, and are then tabbed in place using separately-printed colored shapes. These are symbols taken from organizational flow charts and logic diagrams for electronic circuits. This obscure contemporary vocabulary, misused as a kind of ham-handed commentary, accords somehow with the challenges of trying to access and address the griefs of survivors, whether from earlier horrors or of our current disasters.

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CONTINUE LOOP UNTIL (c) 2020 Ben Altman, All rights reserved.

My Lost Father

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Symbols, left to right:

PROCESS; PRODUCTION OF DOCUMENT; AND GATE; CONTINUE LOOP UNTIL MANUAL INTERRUPTION

CONTINUE LOOP UNTIL (c) 2020 Ben Altman, All rights reserved.

To Hear You Call Mother

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Symbols, left to right:

DATA INPUT/OUPUT; DISPLAY INFORMATION; NOT GATE; DELAY; STORED DATA

CONTINUE LOOP UNTIL (c) 2020 Ben Altman, All rights reserved.

My Life

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Symbols, left to right:

MATERIAL INPUT/OUTPUT; DISPLAY DATA; CONNECTOR

CONTINUE LOOP UNTIL (c) 2020 Ben Altman, All rights reserved.

Your Son My Son

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Symbols, left to right:

OR gate; SUBROUTINE; NOT GATE 

CONTINUE LOOP UNTIL (c) 2020 Ben Altman, All rights reserved.

We Didn't Get to Know You

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The Dutch inscription reads:

"In Memoriam

For my Parents...

...For my Sisters and Brothers...

...We didn't get to know you

but we've never forgotten you."

Symbols used, left to right:

NOT GATE; OR GATE; PROCESS

CONTINUE LOOP UNTIL (c) 2020 Ben Altman, All rights reserved.

For Those He Loved

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Symbols:

Left image, top row:

PREPARATION; DECISION; PROCESS.

Left image, bottom:

DELAY; DISPLAY INFORMATION; START/STOP

Right Image, l-r:

CONNECTOR; MANUAL INPUT.

CONTINUE LOOP UNTIL (c) 2020 Ben Altman, All rights reserved.

Before You Closed Your Eyes

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Symbols, left to right:

MANUAL INPUT; CONNECTOR; CONTINUE OFF PAGE; MATERIAL OUTPUT

CONTINUE LOOP UNTIL (c) 2020 Ben Altman, All rights reserved.

Just a Name

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The Dutch inscription reads:

“Dad, I now have 10 Jewish great-grandchildren. One of them is named for you. Everlasting thanks.”

Symbols, left to right:

PRODUCTION OF DOCUMENT; CONNECTOR; DATA IN/OUT; STOP

CONTINUE LOOP UNTIL (c) 2020 Ben Altman, All rights reserved.

Every Day In My Thoughts

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The Dutch inscription reads:

"To the memory of my parents...

...every day in my thoughts"

Symbols:

Left image, top:

CONTINUE OFF PAGE

Left image, bottom:

CONTINUE LOOP UNTIL MANUAL INTERRUPTION

Right Image, l-r:

STORED DATA; CONTINUE OFF PAGE

CONTINUE LOOP UNTIL (c) 2020 Ben Altman, All rights reserved.

May Their Souls

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The Hebrew inscription on the headstone is an acronym: "May his soul be bound in the bond of life." The plaque has a version of the same.

Symbols, left to right:

START/STOP; AND GATE; PROCESS

CONTINUE LOOP UNTIL (c) 2020 Ben Altman, All rights reserved.

My Dear Husband

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Symbols

Left image, top:

PREPARATION

Left image, bottom:

DECISION

Right Image, top:

MERGE

Right Image, bottom:

PROCESS 

CONTINUE LOOP UNTIL (c) 2020 Ben Altman, All rights reserved.

Some Day Maybe

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Dutch inscription: "You are not forgotten."

Symbols

Left image, l-r:

DELAY; DISPLAY INFORMATION MERGE

Right Image, l-r: OR GATE; STORED DATA; DELAY

CONTINUE LOOP UNTIL (c) 2020 Ben Altman, All rights reserved.

Some Day Maybe: Close-up of assembly

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