Photographer Ben Altman shows exhibit about human atrocities, violence at Light Work Gallery

A woman stood in front of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum in present day Poland, her billowy red windbreaker and black headphones covering her ears, hinting she was a tourist. As she pointed a small digital camera at the site, she had no idea a photographer standing behind her was capturing the intimate moment.

The photographer, Ben Altman, snapped the picture and moved on. Just as interested in the tourists as he was in the memorials, he had been taking photos like this for months as part of a project called “Site/Sight.”

“Site/Sight” opened March 21 at the Light Work Hallway Gallery located on the edge of the Syracuse University campus and will run until July 22. The photo collection that strives to show the relationship between the locations of violent historical turning points, contrasting how they affect people who see them today.

“(It’s about) being sympathetic to the idea that you need to sometimes use the cameras as a kind of distancing device to put between yourself and the awfulness,” Altman explained.

The photos in the gallery were taken at various sites of mass murder and violence across the world. The events that occurred at these places were so powerful that they became turning points in history, Altman said. Rather than take photos of the memorials themselves, however, Altman chose to photograph the backs of tourists’ cameras as they took their own pictures.

Connor Martin | Staff Photographer

John Mannion, Light Work’s master printer, said he thinks Altman’s work communicates an interesting social comment.

In awful places such as these, he said people tend feel the need to document their visit because of the historical significance of the location.

“Most all of us have a camera, and have a compulsion because of that to make photographs in places that feel, or almost sort of demand, that kind of attention,” Mannion said.

The show is arranged so the people in the photos are angled toward each other, almost as if they are having a conversation, Altman said. He hopes this setup will encourage viewers to think critically about the connection between atrocities, as well as their own personal engagement with memorials, he said.

Altman was born and raised in Brighton, England, and later got his degree in physics while studying in London. Upon completing his studies, he relocated to the United States and eventually, he and his wife began to travel the world for her job as a distinguished author and now law professor at Cornell University.

It was in Hong Kong, where they lived for many months, that Altman discovered photography was something he was interested in doing full-time.

Altman worked as a commercial photographer in Chicago for nearly 15 years before the job began to wear him out. He stopped seeking out new clients and slowly decreased his workload until he didn’t have a single client left.

It wasn’t until about 16 years ago, when Altman was backpacking through the American West, that his fascination with photography began to seep back into his life. He said he realized political and historical work was what really piqued his interest in the art form.

The turning point in his career came in 2005, he said. Alberto Gonzales, former Attorney General of the United States, testified to Congress in an attempt to justify the use of waterboarding as an interrogation technique. Altman said Gonzales was lying through his teeth, and eventually decided he should use photography to protest it.

Citing a lack of photographic evidence of the interrogation techniques used in Guantanamo Bay as his influence, Altman created a series of seven photos called “Guantánamo Basement.” In it, Altman took portraits of himself being subjected to various torture techniques used for interrogation, such as waterboarding and electrocution.

“I was sort of referencing the absurdity of the government’s policy,” Altman said. “But also, I think, one of the key aspects of that project was that it was photographing some things that can’t be seen.”

This project reignited Altman’s passion, and made him realize his curiosity for events of atrocities that have occurred throughout human history. He said these moments of mass violence were turning points for civilizations and their repercussions still influence the world today.

This realization would later provide part of the influence for “Site/Sight.” The project started when Altman was traveling the world.

Altman realized that he could continue this project during his wife’s seven-month sabbatical, when they traveled the world. He was able to photograph countries like China, Vietnam, Cambodia, Russia, Czech Republic, England, Poland and Germany, to name a few. He also went to sites in the United States, including the World Trade Center and the site of the Oklahoma City bombings.

“It’s actually very difficult to get one of these photographs, because people don’t spend much time taking photographs,” Altman said. “I have to be close enough so that when they take out their camera, I can sneak up behind them and take my photograph before they remove the camera or take it down.”

Although the exhibit had been shown at the Houston Center for Photography and at the prestigious Kopeikin Gallery in Los Angeles, Mary Lee Hodgens, the associate director of Light Work, discovered the project through Lenscratch.com.

Fascinated by the series and familiar with Altman’s work through his previous shows at ArtRage Gallery, also in Syracuse, she decided to bring the photos to Light Work.

Altman took the photographs using a hand-held 4-by-5 press camera from the 1940s to get the shots. Because the camera is heavy and uses sheet film, Altman could only take about ten photos per day.

Although Altman’s camera is unorthodox, he said that despite the odd look every now and then he mostly went unnoticed at the tourist sites. Now that the gallery is completed, he said he’s content to move on and work on a new project because he gets to continue doing what he loves.

Said Altman: “It took probably seven or eight years of doing different sorts of things and fooling around with it until I sort of discovered what it was that really interested me.”

CORRECTION: In a previous version of this article, the name of the building the woman stood in front of in Poland was misstated. The woman stood in front of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum. The Daily Orange regrets this error.