this because I was also interested in how those Outside of his ‘Disaster Areas’ Gert Jan has Washington, D.C. I was interested in taking a
places looked much later when ‘the news’ has long assembled a body of works pertaining to what photograph of a watercolor by Adolf Hitler that he
lost it’s interest in them.” some might consider, mundane documentation. brought to the application for the Academy of
But again taking his work for face value would be Fine Arts in Vienna. Everybody knows the story
An important aspect to Gert Jan’s series is the the ultimate form of degradation. One such series that he is a failed artist but almost nobody knows
removal of the ‘intentional death’ element. Rather is ‘The Past in the Present’ in which Gert Jan what his watercolors really looked like.” A failed
than focusing on the iconic images of the photographs historically relevant objects that artist perhaps, but at the time nobody knew who
catastrophic in respect to genocide or mass essentially link back to great catastrophe. These Adolf Hitler would inevitably become.
execution sites Gert Jan has chosen to focus on relics, if you will, showcase a kind of irony of sorts
catastrophe as a result of technical or human where the image placed in front of you has an It’s this almost wry sense of artistry that has
failure. “I don’t deal with deliberate acts of indirect link that only someone in the present day propelled Gert Jan’s work into what has become
tragedy,” he says. “It would feel wrong to would have an understanding of it’s significance. a great library of catastrophic miscellany. His
photograph places of terrorism, or concentration “For instance when I took pictures of the curiosity for the forgotten has made viewers
camps,” he continues. watercolors of Adolf Hitler that are kept in the remember and his promotion of the uneventful
cellar of the Army Center for Military History in has caused quite the phenomenon.
Above, ‘AMSTERDAM’ On June 11th, 2001 Herman Brood commits suicide
by jumping off the roof of the Amsterdam Hilton Hotel. 160 x 125 cm
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