This painting is based on a famous photograph from World War II, Forcibly Pulled out of Bunkers, 1943, which depicts Nazi soldiers rounding up a group of Jews for deportation to the death camps during the Holocaust, in which six million Jews perished. The emotional impact of the image is localized in the terrified face of the young boy at right, who has become a symbol of the war’s child victims.

Unexpectedly Hod isolates the figure of the woman, divorcing her from her historical context. The gesture of her raised hands is now ambiguous since the soldiers have been omitted. Nevertheless the terror of the moment remains as she gazes into a menacing darkness.

The artist’s deletions, coupled with his glossy painting style, initially seem to present an innocuous image of a beautiful woman. But an understanding of the original image reveals the brutal truth of this person’s horrific experience. The painting is an exploration of the photograph’s iconic status and the ways such records of the Holocaust may lose some of their power through repeated reproduction.