LOS ANGELES— In the black and white photographs of Jonas Kulikauskas, the quiet streets of Vilnius, Lithuania hide a dark secret. The cobblestones trace the footprint of the Vilna Ghetto, where nearly 40,000 Jews lived during the Holocaust.
In I often Fforget, Kulikauskas’ solo exhibition at California State University, Los Angeles, the photographer illuminates a story that until recently has been obscured by scholars. In 1941, around 265,000 Jews were forced to live in the Vilna Ghetto, but by 1943 around 95% of them had been murdered or transferred to concentration camps. With the community decimated, the Jewish stories almost disappeared. After the fall of the Soviet Union, the Lithuanian government reopened its Jewish Museum and erected memorials, but contemporary life still paid little attention to the Jewish culture that once thrived in their neighborhood. With a WWII-era lens mounted on a modern 8 x 10 medium format camera body, Kulikauskas recreated the archival aesthetic of the ghetto with the modernity that shines through his subjects: a cafe that tap on their laptop, a delivery driver with their COVID-19 face masks pulled over their chins, and a bridal party celebrating their union at a haunted lot.
The title of the exhibition refers to an expression commonly uttered by Holocaust survivors, “never forget”, but Kulikauskas’ photographs are not about forgetting, but rather about never being taught. In a didactic placed at the front of the gallery, Kulikauskas writes about the lack of education he received in the Lithuanian Catholic school he and his siblings attended in Southern California.
“My sister Rima told me that, to her great embarrassment, she learned for the first time [the Holocaust] from a Jewish friend when she was a student,” he wrote. While revisiting his Grade 12 textbook, he made a discovery. “The Second World War is described in seventeen pages. The word “Žydai”, or Jews, cannot be found. My brother Andrius pointed out that in fact, Volume III contains information about the Litvaks. A chapter simply titled “Jews” contains only one sentence on the Holocaust. »
For this reason, I often forget adopts various exhibition techniques found in art institutions, history museums and war memorials. Alongside Kulikauskas’ photographs are maps and timelines of the ghetto, metal-framed reproductions of government ordinances setting out strict rules for Jews to follow, and large explanatory didactics that provide historical context for the Vilna Ghetto. and the pony, a field of death. These pedagogical methods find their place in a university gallery, given that two-thirds of young adults don’t know about the Holocaust.
Kulikauskas presents all of her photographs in simple, manila paper folders, forcing a tactile, archival experience. Picturesque images are combined with testimonies from survivors of the Vilna Ghetto, drawn from extensive research in books, essays and videos. This forces the viewer to examine the photographs closely and juxtapose the mundane urban scenes with the horrors that once unfolded in their place. In “Rūdninkų Street No. 6, Vilnius, Lithuania, (Former Judenrat Headquarters, Vilna Ghetto 1)” (2021), a chic woman wearing sunglasses and strappy sandals struts through a building with a glass door and a romantic and ruined facade. Next to the photo is a block of text by Abraham Sutzkever, Yiddish poet, ghetto survivor and witness at the Nuremberg trials, which describes a harrowing scene that took place on the same street: “At 4 Rudnitske (Rūdninkų), au At the foot of the wooden gate, a half-naked woman was lying on a pile of rags having an epileptic fit. The moon lit up his tousled hair and gave his cheeks an unearthly green hue. The two women are stooges, but only the image of the modern will progress in history. Behind our fashionista, trowels rest on a windowsill, soon to cover the brick that pierces through the cracked concrete facade. It is a subtle metaphor for the woman in Sutzkever’s text, whose figure is largely lost, a crude sketch in a testimony.
In addition to the photographic records, there are two large installations. In “Ponar/Ponary (Paneriai) Memorial” (2023), a room in the gallery is filled with stones, which reminded me of the pebbles Jews leave on tombstones. Projected onto the wall is a pastoral view of the trees – this is the view a victim would see if thrown into the pony. It turns out that the number of rocks was carefully counted. The 75,000 stones represent the Jews who were buried in this killing field.
The other installation, “Sifters” (2023), documents a team of archaeologists excavating the site of the Great Synagogue of Vilna, vandalized by the Nazis and then completely destroyed by the Soviets in the 1950s. Kulikauskas displays his documentation in three wooden sieve, the same tools used to filter artifacts from the rubble. Each photograph, which shows archaeologists sorting through old coins and name signs, looks like a relic itself. The huge trays also evoke the darkroom trays that Kulikauskas uses to develop his gelatin silver prints.
But I often forget is pretty quiet visually, the testimonials and stories it unearths are hard to digest. Despite this, it is an important way to associate modern life with the disturbing reality of the past. Kulikauskas’ lack of Holocaust education reflects a threat that is ever-present in America, such as Florida Republicans’ attempt to ban all forms of critical race theory, including Jewish studies, in the classroom. We can only remember history if it is taught to us. Without education, the streets are silent and the past can only repeat itself.
Jonas Kulikauskas: I often forget continues at the Ronald H. Silverman Fine Arts Gallery, California State University (5151 State University Drive, University Hills, Los Angeles) until July 7. The exhibition was organized by the gallery.
