HR Giger: A. Crowley (The Beast 666) references a photo of former prisoners of the Buchenwald Nazi concentration camp from 1945?


leading from
 

a) Crowley (The Beast 666), 1975, work 274

A. Crowley (The Beast 666), 1975, work 274




b) Buchenwald camp 1945

The other side to Giger's painting is these humanoid mutants of various kinds and how the frame work with these character sticking out of the frame work reminds me of a certain photo from the American liberation of the German Nazi concentration camps at the end of the second world war. 

Here we have the photo of the former prisoners of the "little camp" in Buchenwald stare out from the wooden bunks in which they slept three to a "bed." when the camps were being liberated by the Americans (National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, Md.; US Holocaust Memorial Museum)

Before I could only have the slightest sense of any connection between the two images back on November 17th 2018 but today on 23rd February 2020 I suddenly was able to make further connections between the two.

 

Source https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/photo/former-prisoners-of-the-little-camp-in-buchenwald




c) Upper row
The man on the left here with the top of his head to the camera becomes the side view of a biomechanoid head with machine gun barrels on the side of the face. 

The presence of the finger near to the nose of the man on the right might then become the chin pipe





d) Lower row





d.i) Perhaps the thin faces here have contributed to the look of the man with the cone hat who in Giger's painting is Aleister Crowley





d.ii)  The upper head of a man becomes the strange skeletal female face, his shoulder on the right becomes the prosthetic breast while the head of the man lying down becomes the hand making the 'Okay' gesture.


1 comment:

  1. "HR Giger: A. Crowley (The Beast 666) references a photo of former prisoners of the Buchenwald Nazi concentration camp from 1945?" was posted on 26th March 2020

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