One Simple Photograph. A Million Untold Stories

What do you see when you look at this image?

There isn't much to see, is there? This simple photo shows a single strand of barbed wire. A brick wall with a light fixture and a sign with a number on it. Four simple elements. The focus in on the strand of wire, which is why the background is deliberately out of focus but still discernible.

I generally photograph landscapes and wildlife, things of beauty. I seldom write a post focused on a single photograph, especially one that isn't breathtaking in its beauty. People enjoy looking at gorgeous scenery and impressive wild animals. Barbed wire? Not so much.

But I wanted to share this image taken during a recent trip to Poland. This single strand of barbed wire (there were others above and below it) is part of a fence within the original Auschwitz concentration camp. The brick wall is part of Block 23, a former Polish army barracks converted, along with many others, to become a prison. Block 23 was one of several buildings that held Soviet prisoners of war. The vast majority of these prisoners died of starvation or disease.

I like this photograph for its stark simplicity. Its four elements tell a story, of imprisonment and cruelty and death. Is there any doubt about the story the image tells nearly 80 years after the end of the war? 

"A picture is worth a thousand words" goes an old adage. I think this image is worth a lot more than 1,000 words. It speaks to torture, cruelty, imprisonment, starvation, death on a mass scale, hatred, inhumanity, sadism, and so many more of man's basest actions.

I took more than 1,500 images during my time at both the Auschwitz main camp and at the nearby, and much larger, Auschwitz-Birkenau camp. I think this photo is one of the handful that really represents the horror of the Nazi effort to exterminate those they considered to be undesirable and sub-human.

I would love to hear your thoughts.