Human Civilization Has Been No More Than

How Happily, Said Austerlitz, Have I Sat Over A Book In The Deepening Twilight Until I Could No Longer Make Out The Words And My Mind Began To Wander, And How Secure Have I Felt Seated At The Desk In My House In The Dark Night, Just Watching The Tip Of My Pencil In The Lamplight Following Its Shadow, As If Of Its Own Accord And With Perfect Fidelity, While That Shadow Moved Regularly From Left To Right, Line By Line, Over The Ruled Paper.

The Capital Amassed In The Eighteenth And Nineteenth Centuries Through Various Forms Of Slave Economy Is Still In Circulation, Said De Jong, Still Bearing Interest, Increasing Many Times Over And Continually Burgeoning Anew.

And So They Are Ever Returning To Us, The Dead. At Times They Come Back From The Ice More Than Seven Decades Later And Are Found At The Edge Of The Moraine, A Few Polished Bones And A Pair Of Hobnailed Boots.

I Believe That The Black-and-white Photograph, Or Rather The Gray Zones In The Black-and-white Photograph, Stand For This Territory That Is Located Between Life And Death.

One Has The Impression That Something Is Stirring Inside [photographs] - It Is As If One Can Hear Little Cries Of Despair, Gémissements De Désespoir... As If The Photographs Themselves Had A Memory And Were Remembering Us And How We, The Surviving, And Those Who Preceded Us, Once Were.