Author: Anne Wallace (Pittsburgh, PA, USA)
Photo location: Malthausen Concentration Camp, near Linsz, Austria
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Categories: [discovery]  [dream]  [reflection]  

This summer at age 50, after a sudden twist of fate and corporate reorganization left me unemployed for the first time in my life, I decided to screw up my courage, set aside my self doubts, live wildly and begin to pursue my own secret dreams. Although I had no formal photography training, I applied to a university to obtain a Master of Fine Arts degree in New Media.

After completing the introductory summer three-week intensive in Linsz, Austria, I found myself asking, "Why make art?". Should art make us question social and political issues? Does all art change the world for the better? Is the artistic pursuit of beauty a quest for shallow pleasure?

Still pondering, I went to the Malthausen concentration camp a few miles from the outskirts of Linsz. As I wandered through the abandoned camp, I thought about the people unjustly imprisoned who suffered day after day in unbearable conditions.

The grounds were vacant. I was in a place where the silence hung heavy, the unspoken stories of anguish crushing trivial conversation. How did the camp's victims find the strength to go on living?

Suddenly. as I walked by one of the buildings that housed prisoners, I was startled by unusual reflections in an outside windowpane. Seeing the partial figure of a person floating between the boundaries of the real and the imagined, I realized that art has the power of possibility. Art is a glimpse of the beauty of a cloud in a blue sky beyond barbed wire fences. Art has the ability to inspire us. Like those imprisoned in a concentration camp, art reminds us we are still free to imagine, dream, hope, and love.

Who will tell whether one happy moment of love or the joy of breathing or walking on a bright morning and smelling the fresh air, is not worth all the suffering and effort which life implies. (Erich Fromm)

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