Next week, a powerful art exhibit opens in an unusual spot. The District of St. Louis, the shopping center in Chesterfield, will play host to Lest We Forget, an exhibition of more than 70 larger-than-life portraits of Holocaust survivors. The photos were taken over a period of 10 years by German photographer Luigi Toscano, who will be in St. Louis for several weeks of programming tied to the exhibit.
A different version of the exhibit was previously displayed on the campus of Washington University in 2022. Toscano, who has photographed an estimated 800 survivors, says he doesn’t see a big difference between showing his work to college students or to shoppers, noting that he has shown these photographs all around the world. “The trick is that I show the exhibition where there are many people,” he says.
He adds, “The first reaction is, ‘What is this’? And then they start to read, and then they start to understand, and then they start asking questions, and that is really important.”…