Gustav Metzger: Historic Photographs

Gustav Metzger: Historic Photographs was published for the first US solo exhibition of the influential artist and activist Gustav Metzger (born 1926). As a survivor of the Holocaust, Metzger has first-hand experience of displacement and destruction. The exhibition at the New Museum featured the most complete installation to date of Metzger’s series of sculptural installations titled Historic Photographs. This series confronts the viewer with some of the most powerful and tragic images of twentieth-century history, which Metzger has enlarged, obscured or hidden in a variety of ways. Historic Photographs spans a range of historical events including the destruction of the Warsaw ghetto in 1943, the Oklahoma City bombing and environmental destruction in contemporary England.