© Jessica M. Kaufman
Jessica's work focus around what would normally be considered almost picturesque scenes of different kinds of landscapes. However, these photos hold much more than that. Through her technique of developing her photos, these landscapes turn more haunted, erie yet with a beautiful painterly handmand quality to them. For this series, Panopticon, Jessica focused on landscapes on the site of Nazi concentration camps. Although she does not hide this information from the viewer, it is not openly apparent either. In this way she is leaving it up to the viewer to make of it what they want. She had stated in an interview that when she had taken a group of her students to the show without telling them what they were looking at, many had told her that they had found them beautiful. However, when told where the photos where taken they all shared the same feeling of guilt for thinking something like that could be beautiful. To this she replied how there is no need for that guilt, that these are just trees, nothing more, yet they seem to carry the weight and guilt of that which was done in this area and that is what she wished to portray in these images. These images are not meant to be thought as horrible but use decay in the process of making and turn it into something more.
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