Conflicted Image

About this time a year ago my wife & I were in Nuremberg, Germany and we both were overwhelmed by the architecture, milieu, food, and history. It was our first exposure to Germany and it was a positive one. We had the opportunity to explore the Nuremberg Castle and the old town, which captures the essence of so-called fairy tale type images of Germany (think of Grimms’ fairy tales).

But there was a darker side to Nuremberg (not of its own making), and that was that it was seen by Adolf Hitler as the the quintessential German town, and chosen by him as the site of the Nazi Party Conventions, the Zeppelinfeld or Nazi Part rally grounds.

I wanted to capture that part of history since I grew up with it and had a hard time coming to terms with the cruelty of that part of German history. The tour guide on our visit of the Zeppelinfeld spoke of the conflicted attitudes of current German citizens to that part of their history, i.e., should it be preserved (at an expense) or should it simply be allowed to fade into the past without saving such vestiges as the Nazi parade/rally grounds.

There were many photos I took of that part of German history while I was in Nuremberg, but only recently was I able to feel comfortable with capturing what I felt when I visited that former Nazi rally grounds.

Specifically, the color photo did not capture what I felt. But then I realized that I must submit to how that  part of history settled onto my visual memory, namely, black and white imagery.

So, I searched for the image that most captured that time of Germany’s dark past. I finally found one photo where the heavens opened up to shine on the center stage/platform where Hitler spoke in historically passionate terms of total war and global conquest. To me it was an image of contrast, and an image of conflict. Was the heavenly light shining on the former Hitler platform that of acceptance or was it that of final judgement, i.e., it was an empty stage of lost opportunity and unfulfilled and ill conceived ambitions. It was an image that the purifying light of the heavens shines on the emptiness of man’s folly and empty ambitions. That was the judgement of history and world time.

The actual photo of the Nazi rally grounds was crafted to this final image by using Photoshop to eliminate the two large light poles and many fence posts preventing people from accessing the stands. Notice that there are no actual Nazi symbols located anywhere. We were told by the tour guide that Nazi symbols do indeed exist but not in areas of public access. (Again, an element of conflict.)