NEW WORK, LOSS AND BEAUTY: A Song of Death and dying

The work for the second part of Loss and Beauty is nearly complete. After numerous trips to Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Slovakia, Ukraine, and the Czech Republic, I am compositing images.. My intent for A Song of Death and Dying is to illustrate the events dubbed the Holocaust by Bullets. This term was created by Father Patrick DesBois, a Catholic priest who has dedicated more than fifteen years to discovering and recording sites of massacres that took place in Eastern Europe before the killing centers came into being. A new book for the complete work will be published, including two essays from renowned scholars, Dr. Irina Chymreva and Dr. Tomasz Cebulski.

If you are interested in accompanying me, privately, during the early spring, please be in touch. I’ll be taking one or two guests on several of the trips. I always use guides and world-class scholars to help me achieve greater depth of understanding to inform my work. This means, for potential guests, an in-depth opportunity to create awareness and make more meaningful images of this horrific time in our collective history.

Since the war began in Ukraine, I have been, along with the help of students and through Dr. Cebulski’s contacts, helping with much needed medical supplies, equipment, and power generators for civilians and soldiers. If you are wanting to help, your donation goes directly where it is needed most. I can share more information about this if you send an email. (keron @ keronpsillas . com)

A Song of Death and Dying

Keron Psillas Oliveira Speaks with Dr. Tomasz Cebulski in (Ponary) Panerai, Lithuania a mass murder site from World War II.

Keron patiently, frame by frame visually reconstructed sites by looking at those from a different, history aware, vantage point and offering them narrative. She devoted herself to the act of conscious memory by working at the non-sites of memory.

Dr. Tomasz Cebulski
Historian, author, Auschwitz after Auschwitz: History, memory, politics.

They invite the viewer to enter into a reflective mode. They demand to focus to see the details, to see the individual human stories in an otherwise overwhelming genocide statistics….I witnessed how it may bring solace and reconciliation with a historical site to still traumatized second generation of Holocaust survivors.

Dr. Tomasz Cebulski
Historian, author, Auschwitz after Auschwitz: History, memory, politics.

After meeting with her prior to the opening of Loss and Beauty I started to understand the her investment in research and travel to achieve the messaging of her art and to move beyond simply photographing historical locations, to the point of empathetically living through the history of the people, culture, and trauma presented in her photographs.

Alan Fitzgerald
Gallery owner, Gallery 4 and Art Intersection

…she has an insatiable drive to investigate, study, and illuminate in a way that helps reconciliation and informs her audiences of the connection between the past and present.

Alan Fitzgerald
Gallery owner, Gallery 4 and Art Intersection

What made…. (this) work by Keron Psillas diﬀerent from many other works? Once a poet said: Plunge to the bottom of sorrows and there, merge with them with your soul, mourning the departed as yourself. But her photographic talent has poetic force when a historical fact, before being presented by the artist to the public, becomes a fact of the creator’s biography, experienced by the artist. Keron tells this story as a medium, being there, inside. Her images have a hypnotic nature, immersing the viewer in themselves.

Dr. Irina Chymreva
Noted international scholar of photographic history, curator, author

…the conversation on topics such as the value of human life and the fragility of culture, the preservation of the Holocaust’s memory and the meaning of universal ethics can only happen on a person-to-person level, from the work of art to the viewer’s soul.

Dr. Irina Chymreva
Noted international scholar of photographic history, curator, author

Keron’s photography is a fact of art: that is, we cannot retell it and limit it completely to that. In her work, everything is important: theme, form, and intonation. The last two are so personal and unique that, no matter how much we talk about the theme, only meeting with the artist’s original work allows us to experience the depth of her intention. This feature of Psillas’s works is very important – her personal voice can reach hearts, otherwise we would only be talking about a poster that has unconditional social value, but is not able to change the viewer, customize him from the inside.

Dr. Irina Chymreva
Noted international scholar of photographic history, curator, author

ORDER NOW

You can also read more about Loss and Beauty on Rfotofolio.

News

Part II of Loss and Beauty has begun. A major reason why we need more awareness stems from articles like this – Anti-Semitism in Europe
Read the article on CNN

In 2018, a survey organized by the Claims Conference, USHMM, and others found that 41% of 1,350 American adults surveyed, and 66% of millennials, did not know what Auschwitz was. 41% of millennials incorrectly claimed that 2 million Jews or less were murdered during the Holocaust, while 22% said they had never heard of the Holocaust. Over 95% of all Americans surveyed were unaware that the Holocaust occurred in the Baltic states of Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia. 45% of adults and 49% of millennials weren’t able to name a single Nazi concentration camp or ghetto in German-occupied Europe during the Holocaust.

Loss and Beauty

Loss and Beauty (the book that accompanies the exhibition) was awarded BEST OF SHOW in the prestigious Davis Orton Gallery/Griffin Museum of Photography Photobook 2015! Thank you Karen Davis and Paula Tognarelli for this tremendous honor.

Loss and Beauty has also received the Honorable Mention Award from the 2019 International Photography Awards for Fine Art Book and Self-Published Book. This is humbling, gratifying, and deeply affirming.

Loss and Beauty continues to be exhibited in the US. The most recent show was hosted by The Peninsula JCC in Foster City, California, with a gallery talk moderated by Dr. Shana Penn from The Taube Foundation. I was delighted to meet the community there and speak at length about the new work being created.

I have been working on Part 2 of Loss and Beauty since 2018. After many trips to Poland, Ukraine, Slovakia, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, and the Czech Republic, I am creating composites to finalize the entire project. My intent for Part 2 is to illustrate the events dubbed the Holocaust by Bullets. This term was created by Father Patrick DesBois a Catholic priest who has dedicated more than twelve years to discovering and recording sites of massacres that took place in Eastern Europe before the extermination centers came into being.

If you are interested in accompanying me, privately, during late January of 2025 for the 80th anniversary of the Liberation of Auschwitz, please be in touch. I’ll be taking several guests on this tremendously important trip. I always use guides and world-class scholars to help me achieve greater depth of understanding to inform my work. This means, for potential guests, an in-depth opportunity to create awareness and make more meaningful images of this horrific time in our collective history.

Here are just a few images that represent the project.