The conversion of enchantment to bitter disillusionment is most evident in his series It was Easy (1988), …For the generation born after 1940, coming to terms with fascism is not merely a question of coming to terms with the past; it is not limited to a specific period of history, but is rather a matter of daily lived practice.

Doris von Drathen 1992

The images form enigmas forcing us to rely on our own imagination and memory to complete the picture, while the text directly addresses the viewer. … Gerz recalls the unsettling truth that, collectively, in the face of totalitarianism, man has a tendency to comply or become indifferent, rather than act upon his will.

Bojana Pejic 1993

The ambivalent reality of his photographic images supports his strategies of absence. Fragments of lived reality, these images explore the limits of existing definitions of art. In black and white, they are already an abstraction, a shadow, something incomplete. So too, the neutral voice is pervasive here ("It was easy to win." "It was easy to plunder the loot." "It was easy to make laws for people." "It was easy to make soap out of bones."). This neutrality is in keeping with one who has always practiced an amoral oscillation, not only between different media but between contrary sets of meanings.

James Campbell 1994