Memorial

The light in that place was amazing and it really made the shot. Only thing is... that place is the holocaust memorial in Berlin.

When I took this picture I was observing people visiting the memorial and despite the subject matter, grayness and bad weather, some visitors were actually playing hide and seek in there. Is that being disrespectful? Was I disrespectful by taking what is almost a fashion photo in that place? I thought about these questions for a while and I think it is all actually very cleverly part of the design.

The area of the memorial where you can actually experience the horrible details of what happened is underneath that sculpture and it's a very dark series of rooms. The visit is in almost complete darkness with simple displays telling the story.

And when you go outside to the sculpture area seen in the photo, the light goes from dark near the ground (because of all the blocks surrounding you) to bright light in the sky. Which leads me to think that while on first impression the series of gray blocks are meant to be a dark representation of what happened, it's actually meant to be the optimistic part of the remembrance. The place makes you look up, towards the light, while keeping the dark past never fully out of sight.

I hope that people who were playing hide and seek got the message, even subconsciously.