The Writing on the Wall

Shimon Attie’s Emotional History Lesson

For The Writing on the Wall, artist Shimon Attie shined a light on the vibrance of Berlin’s Jewish community in the time before World War II. Using a slide projector, he lit up buildings with photographs taken nearly six decades earlier to bring the Scheunenviertel—the Jewish Quarters—back to life. In a city like Berlin, the daily foot traffic can easily eclipse the histories that the war erased and the intense emotional ties from which many people are still reeling today. Attie photographed the projections, preserving the moving juxtaposition of past and present lives and the temporary reanimation of communities lost.