HYPERALLERGIC -- 12 Nazi Concentration Camps, presented by Angela Meleca Gallery, is a body of work by photographer James Friedman who, in the early ’80s, took the largely unprecedented step of documenting post-Holocaust era Nazi camps in color photography.
“For the first time, photographs of concentration camps are brazenly passionate and ‘hot,’ rather than detached and ‘cool,'” wrote Friedman in his 1983 artist statement. Friedman began as a self-taught photographer, before attending the Ohio State University honors program to earn a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree with Distinction in Photography. Later, while earning a master’s degree in photography from San Francisco State University, he worked as an assistant to Imogen Cunningham, and also served as a studio assistant to Ansel Adams.