In a tefillin-shaped container, this tiny book is accordion-folded in a step-like

pattern and bound with a mica cover. On its small square facets are archive

and contemporary photographs of the Staircase of Death in Mauthausen, Austria, a Nazi labor camp from WWII. Prisoners cut large blocks of granite from the quarry and carried them on their backs up this Staircase, out of the quarry. These images are interspersed with a recitation of one to one-hundred-eighty-six, the number of steps themselves.

 

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Additional Thoughts:

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Over the years I have produced artworks that attempt to reflect on minor aspects of the Shoah. I say minor because I truly believe that the enormity of the event cannot be approached for consumption, transformation, and art-making.  This book was produced for an installation about Mauthausen at Temple Judea Museum in Philadelphia (in 2000 and then the edition was further developed in 2004). I chose to focus on the number 186, as a meditative response to quantifying the incomprehensible.