For the best part of two years I have been working on a self-masturbatory project that might or not turn out to be the 541 page personal deconstruction of the 2007 summer edition of Art Forum that I envision. While working on it today, I decided I wanted to include on one of its pages the image of a boxcar that transported Jews to their demise in concentration camps during WWII. My decision to do so started more tongue and cheek than the subject might call for....
I found a picture of a boxcar on a Google image search and manipulated it to look as it does above. I then began to draw it in pen and ink onto a piece of graph paper that will eventually be scanned onto the computer and further manipulated. Whether this now iconic and terrifying image will carry its iconic and terrifying message within the pages of my project remains to be seen; partly because I am taking it to a bare bones pen and ink, very handmade, almost cartoon-like form, and partly because the impetus for searching the image in the first place came in the form of irony.
What will eventually happen in the pages of my project is something for me, and whomever comes upon it, to ponder in the future. All I know now is what I am feeling after spending some intimate time with this image of an occurrence that predates me but still resonates. I know that I will never forget this thing that I have not experienced personally; but worse, I will never forgive.
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