The cremation ovens in the background were photographed at Sachsenhausen concentration camp not far from Berlin. This camp continued to be used after for some time after WW2 by the occupying Russian government.. At the time I visited, the camp was being maintained as a museum and historic site. The historical perspective given to the visitor through the didactic tour and signage was aimed at an East German audience and it gave particular emphasis to the communists who had been interned there. When I visited the town where this camp is located, my wife and I were taking a day trip to get out of the city. We did not know that the camp existed until after we arrived. The impact of this unplanned vist to the camp on us was crushing; we were both in tears. It is one thing to watch documentary films or look at pictures in textbooks but it is quite another to walk under the iron gates that say "Arbeit Macht Frei " and to confront the physical remains of what is for everyone a kind of archetypical horror. The confrontational form of the picture makes me reconsider how I understand all the pictures that come to mind when I think of "horror, crimes against humanity, images of... ". I think that I have seen so many of them that I have reduced them to convenient stereotypes that are limited in meaning. It warns me about the pitfalls of that process and the need for a stronger connection between the image and what it is a picture of. Athough I have no relatives who died here, this place still means a great deal to me now that I have seen it.