I’ve started this review three or four times by now, and each time I’ve deemed my writing inadequate and started over again. The book, quite frankly, needs to be seen for itself. Like all great works, it defies paraphrase – it cannot be brought under the dominion of a single interpretation. But it is the reviewer’s…
On a recent Friday, members of Congregation Beit Simchat Torah (CBST) arrived at the Islamic Center at New York University in ponchos and rain boots. They dried their laminated signs that read, “Jewish New Yorkers support our Muslim neighbors,” and greeted worshippers attending the weekly Jummah Prayer. Since the first Friday after the election of…
In portraits, Irving Penn liked to photograph his subjects at the mercy of their creations. He shot the fashion designer, Charles James sprawled with near-sensuous resignation at the foot of a mannequin wearing a ball gown; Salvador Dalí with his angular face jutting out as if pulled forward, relentlessly, by his expertly waxed mustache; Gianni…
Before my mother died, I didn’t think about her aesthetic vision, though I always loved her fantastical photographs (1980s–2000s) and large abstract paintings (1970s) that filled our family’s brownstone in Manhattan’s West Village. But at her funeral, Rabbi David Adelson, dean of Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion and a family friend, delivered a eulogy…
These pictures, reprinted from my book “Burn Mark: A Photographic Memoir Of The Six Day War,” document my experiences as an Israeli reservist infantry soldier in the battle of Jerusalem during the Six Day War, and shortly afterward. I photographed things as they happened, and wrote them down within a year. They fell into a…
I’ve never truly believed the idea that portrait photography can tell us a clear truth about its subject. When we look at a portrait of Samuel Beckett, for instance, we might read a certain depth of life, and a certain hawk-like incisiveness, into the nooks and crannies of his face. But despite the expressiveness of…
In the middle of the 20th century, there were two photography exhibitions at The Museum of Modern Art that changed the way we see photography, and more fundamentally, the way we look at the world. The first, 1955’s “The Family of Man” curated by Edward Steichen, was, as the title suggests, aimed at using photography…
An album containing never-before-seen candid photos of German Nazi party leader Adolf Hitler and party members will be auctioned on Wednesday. The photo album found in April 1945 in the bedroom of Hitler’s longtime companion Eva Braun could fetch up to more than more than 15,000 pounds (roughly $18,340 dollars), said C&T Auctions consultant Tim…
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