It seems that a growing number of photographers are focusing on Jewish heritage sites and exhibiting their photographs in museums and galleries.
Jewish heritage sites have long been an inspiration to artists and photographers — and a number of photographic books on Jewish cemeteries, in particular, have come out over the past few decades. Examples of them are listed in our cemeteries publications page.
We have written about — or put on our calendar — several recent exhibitions of photographs of Jewish heritage sites.
These include “Vanishing Traces,” the exhibition in Cologne last year of photos by Christian Herrmann, who has published his photos also on his web site and in book form, and Pen Nun, an exhibit in 2014 of photos of Jewish cemeteries in the Lublin region by Maciej Sztorc. Another major exhibit (and book) in recent years was Matzevot for Everyday Use by Łukasz Baksik, showing gravestones “quarried” and utilized for construction, roadbeds, as grindstones or other uses.
Search the Jewish Heritage Web site for our posts and calendar items about photo exhibits
NOTABLE CURRENT, RECENT OR UPCOMING EXHIBITIONS INCLUDE:
The Ukraine Series
Photographs of former synagogues in modern-day Ukraine, by the German photographer Joanna Diehl. “Victims of the anti-religious political doctrine of the Soviet Union, they were stripped of their original purpose in the years between the two World Wars and some were turned into municipal centres, such as cinemas, sports halls and clubs – roles which they often still fulfil today.”
It runs from October 28 until March 6, 2016, at the Pinakothek der Moderne in Munich.
Lost Jewish Traces
An exhibition of photographs in the Prague Jewish Museum’s educational center, focusing on “vanished and surviving Jewish monuments in Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia” that opens Nov. 3 and runs until Jan. 7, 2016.
The images displayed include contemporary photographs of Jewish heritage sites by Libor Cabák, as well as archival photographs of synagogues and Jewish neighborhoods that were destroyed during or after World War II.
Wojciech Wilczyk: (not) visible / (in) visible
The exhibition, at the Polin Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw, consists of two photographic series by award-winning photographer Wojciech Wilczyk. These include photos from his project “An Innocent Eye Does Not Exist” (2006-2008) — more than 300 photos depicting former synagogues and beit ha-midrashim in today’s Poland that were converted after 1945 into warehouses, fire stations, warehouses, and in the best case – for museums and libraries. For his project Holy War (2009-2014) Wilczyk photographed murals by militant football fans that often contain racist, sometimes anti-Semitic, slogans and symbols.
The exhibit runs from October 23 until January 4, 2016.
Used Stones
Photographs by the Hungarian photographer Bernadett Alpern of synagogues and how they are used (and abused) today — a similar theme as Diehl’s Ukrainian series.
Alpern’s photos have been and are being exhibited in several venues. But most notably, a selection of them has just been put on permanent display at the Memorial Museum of Hungarian Speaking Jewry in Tsfat, Israel.
Synagogues of East-Central Europe, 1781-1944: Photos by Rudolf Klein
A traveling exhibition based on Rudolf Klein’s photographs of synagogues in Hungary and elsewhere in central Europe has been shown in a variety of venues in a number of countries, including Bosnia-Herzegovina, Slovenia, Serbia, Slovakia, Canada, Moldova, and Hungary.
1 comment on “Current & upcoming photo exhibitions on Jewish heritage sites”
On the Oxford Jewish Heritage website we have published several images of the Jewish Cemetery in Oxford and also a downloadable .pdf file of all the graves, with the date of the funeral.