The images by Jewish-American photographers are unique in their response to the mainstream culture. This visual presentation focuses on the origins and development of photography by Jewish photographers in the United States.
Part I
"Photography is about death," wrote Roland Barthes. Indeed, it is about the preservation of a moment that has disappeared into the past. It provides tangible proof of existence in the face of loss. For Jewish photographers, this is a powerful and important aspect.
In the early nineteenth century, the first Jewish-American photographer, Solomon Carvalho, was born into a Sephardic family in Charleston, South Carolina. He was a painter and daguerreotypist, best remembered for accompanying John Charles Fremont on his expedition to the West. They went seeking the most reasonable route for the first transcontinental railroad.
In the mid-nineteenth century, in Hoboken, New Jersey, Alfred Stieglitz was born into a family who came from Germany. He was passionately interested in the changing qualities of nature, particularly clouds, and his photographs captured the transcendent characteristic of his environment. He is best remembered for introducing the most advanced European art to America and for bringing photography to the level of fine art.
Paul Strand, who came from a family recently arrived from Bohemia, was a disciple of Stieglitz. His devotion to America and to cultural pluralism was a guidepost in his aesthetic development. In the 1930s, he was strongly affected by conditions in the western United States, and even moreso, by the events in the Eastern Europe. In the 1950s, he was cited as "subversive" and "un-American" by the Attorney General of the United States.
Born in Kovno, Lithuania, Ben Shahn came to America when he was five years old. He trained as a lithographer and became a painter and photographer. In 1932, he discovered the newly created handheld camera, which gave him the opportunity to document the Lower East Side of New York City and its primarily Jewish population. Later in the decade, he employed art to promote social change. Through his photographs around New York and later in rural America, he documented the living conditions in the hope that this kind of visual education would bring about change.
Part II
This part begins with the photographs of Roman Vishniac. He took surreptitious photographs throughout Eastern Europe, documenting a life that was soon to disappear. Trained as a biologist, he became a linguist, art historian, and philosopher renowned for his photomicroscopy of living organisms.
At the same time, a Jewish photographer from West Prussia, Alfred Eisenstaedt served in the German army during World War I. Due to the rise of Naziism, he immigrated to New York in the mid-1930s and became the father of photojournalism. His photographs have reached far greater numbers of people than most other photographers.
Weegee (aka Arthur Fellig) was born in a shtetl in the Ukraine whose population was one-third Jewish, but came to the United States when he was eleven. Pursuing a somewhat different direction, Weegee photographed the seamier side of life in New York City. He took images of auto accidents, disasters, fires, traumas, and the irony of life. He visited Alfred Stieglitz, with whom he shared the role of seeker of invisible images. Stieglitz sought exaltation while Weegee reveled in shock tactics.
One of the photographers Weegee who shared membership with Weegee in the Photo League was Lisettte Model. She was born in Vienna and studied music, before turning to photography. Her photographs were analytical approaches to people "on the edge," especially those at the extremes of economic distress, chronological age, and physical disability.
The art of Jewish-Americans reflects their individual life experiences and their cultural and ethnic group. This presentation is an overview of works by Jewish-Americans from the 18th century through contemporary times. These artworks, and synagogue architecture, parallel and reflect the conditions of their lives as American Jews at specific times in American history.
