Jewish artist Shahak Shapira was tired of seeing people take cheery and disrespectful selfies at a Holocaust memorial site in Germany and decided to showcase people’s disrespect by photoshopping them into the same location circa early 1940s in a series entitled “Yolocaust”. Shapira’s message is built on the idea of time, and how society forgets about history as it moves further into the past. Shapira displays the inadequate behavior of people at sites that have great historic value, and highlights the fact that history can only have as much value as we allow it through respect.
The artist removes the names and faces of the people within the modern picture because the focal point is how their actions indicate the tendencies of society as a whole rather than them as individuals. The monochromatic coloration of the altered photos underlines the dichotomy of the photos.
