Anna Arendt was born in the German Democratic Republic. She was 24 when the Wall fell, and her daughter was 2. Her parents were born in Germany in 1940, children of war. Both her grandfathers were soldiers who had been in Poland between 1940 and 1942. One returned two years after the end of the war, the other never returned. Later, Anna Arendt discovered that her husband's father, photographer Sid Grossman, came from the region in Poland where her two grandfathers had been sent during the war.
As a child, she found a secret shelf containing family photo albums. "That's where I discovered the power of an image. Photo taken in the summer of 1940. A young family, my grandmother, her baby, and my grandfather in German uniform. An image full of contradictions, evoking ambivalent feelings to this day."
Photographed mainly in Germany and Poland over more than 15 years, the work slips through time like a bloody memory. Walking naked in the dark forest, wolves circling and howling. A girl who becomes a mother who becomes a grandmother who becomes a child. Haunted villages and souls in danger. The harsh reality of the past blends harmoniously with moments of ecstasy that seem to be taken from a Grimm brothers' fairy tale.
Vanishing is an unforgettable portrayal of how beauty and brutality coexist in the hearts of men and beasts.
Charcoal Press, 2024
144 pages
7 × 10 inches
ISBN: 9781736234556
Anna Arendt was born in the German Democratic Republic. She was 24 when the Wall fell, and her daughter was 2. Her parents were born in Germany in 1940, children of war. Both her grandfathers were soldiers who had been in Poland between 1940 and 1942. One returned two years after the end of the war, the other never returned. Later, Anna Arendt discovered that her husband's father, photographer Sid Grossman, came from the region in Poland where her two grandfathers had been sent during the war.
As a child, she found a secret shelf containing family photo albums. "That's where I discovered the power of an image. Photo taken in the summer of 1940. A young family, my grandmother, her baby, and my grandfather in German uniform. An image full of contradictions, evoking ambivalent feelings to this day."
Photographed mainly in Germany and Poland over more than 15 years, the work slips through time like a bloody memory. Walking naked in the dark forest, wolves circling and howling. A girl who becomes a mother who becomes a grandmother who becomes a child. Haunted villages and souls in danger. The harsh reality of the past blends harmoniously with moments of ecstasy that seem to be taken from a Grimm brothers' fairy tale.
Vanishing is an unforgettable portrayal of how beauty and brutality coexist in the hearts of men and beasts.
Charcoal Press, 2024
144 pages
7 × 10 inches
ISBN: 9781736234556
