The Unser Kind Album
In the series, The Unser Kind Album, the montages diverge compositionally from the rest of the work in this exhibition, as they reference not only the aesthetics of the Bauhaus, but the fabric of the family’s life – stripped bare and in flight from the Nazis. Significantly, the series was composed almost entirely from a baby album shipped out of Germany in 1938, like the baby Eveline, whose birth announcement appears on faded yellow newsprint in Eveline, Karlsruhe, den 16, May, 1938.
At the apex of this triangular composition is a mustached gentleman projecting a stature larger than life. His three children surround him; the youngest child appears to embrace him tightly. In this multi-generational piece the same affectionate little girl, Hilde, is seen below sitting on a bed embracing her own children. Glancing at her newborn, she appears lost in thought. Neatly inscribed are the words: July 1938, Karlsruhe.
Months later in Basel Winter 1938, 1939… the figures of Hilde and Oscar Fuchs appear dimly through a yellow veneer. They are posing next to a baby carriage, while anxiously waiting for documents to permit the family safe passage out of Europe. In a second photograph labeled Winter 1943 a father, mother, and two identically dressed daughters are poised together at the edge of a sofa – at a quick glance the archetypal American middle class family. A luminous yellow rectangle reveals Evelyn’s future.
In Basel Winter 1938, 1939…New York Winter 1943, 1944, 1945 the album pages are stacked like building blocks for each passing year, while in Eveline…the album pages do not abut the edges of the frame. Instead they are suspended in space. Yellow triangles enclose the album pages evoking the yellow badges European Jews were forced to wear during the Middle Ages and then again during the Nazi occupation of Europe. “My parents were just waiting for me to be born and then we fled quickly,” surmised Eveline.