OBSERVATIONS

Jews and Photography William Meyers

JEWS HAVE played an indispens- taken by Jews, moving the show's and it was there that he both able role in the history of Amer- curator, Max Kozloff, to contribute learned photography and absorbed ican photography, at least as im- an essay to the catalog pondering a romantic devotion to art with a portant a role as blacks in the the issue of a "Jewish sensibility" in capital A. On his return to the U.S. development of jazz. It is a bit of a photography. The other two shows, in 1890, he quickly came to domi- puzzle why this should be so, if only occupying rather disparate points nate art photography, remaining in because, well into the modern era, on the photographic spectrum, were this position by dint of the brilliant Jews were not notable for their Shekhina, an exhibit of religion- pictures he took, the magazines he work in the plastic arts. Although it related pictures by the actor Leo- edited, his involvement in photo- is true that a number of Jews in nard Nimoy, and (if less pertinent graphic organizations, and the in- Eastern Europe were active in pho- to our theme) the retrospective of fluential galleries he ran. In the ear- tography during the period of its portraits by Richard Avedon at the ly part of the 20th century, Stieglitz first growth in the 19th century, it Metropolitan Museum of Art. did more than any other single in- was only in the 20th century and in To see the connecting links among dividual to have photography rec- America that the numbers involved these events requires some history. ognized as an art, worthy of serious in every facet of the art became attention to the same degree as large, and their talents very con- ALFRED STIEGLITZ (1864-1946) painting, drawing, and sculpture. spicuous. was the first American Jew to affect The body of Stieglitz's pho- Several recent exhibitions help to the larger culture with a camera. In tographs puts him, however, outside focus the question. The first was contrast to most of those who would the arc of development of most of New York: Capital of Photography, come after him, Stieglitz's parents the Jewish photographers who suc- which ran at the Jewish Museum were German (rather than Eastern ceeded him. True, he was noted for last fall and is now on tour. Of its European) in origin, and they were pictures of New York, but what in- several hundred pictures of New rich. His father had abandoned his terested him most was the city's York City, a startlingly high pro- religion upon coming to America, buildings, seen as abstract blocks in portion-about 85 percent-were and Alfred seems to have become artful arrangements; the citizens of WILLIAM MEYERS is a New York City most vividly aware of his family's the city did not much figure in his photographer whose work will be in the Jewishness only when his father was work. For most later Jewish pho- Jews of Brooklyn exhibit at the NYU refused membership in the exclusive tographers, it was to be the other Bronfman Center this spring. His essay, Jockey Club. way around. Also atypical was his "Cheering 'Metamorphoses,"' appeared in In his young manhood, Stieglitz interest both in the nude and in na- the 7ulv-August 2002 COMMENTARY. spent time studying in Germany, I I -D - ture; the former is exemplified in

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the series of pictures he took of his blocks. Blind Woman is without pity and Walker Evans; Joe Rosenthal, wife, the painter Georgia O'Keefe, in its scrutiny, but that very absence who took the picture of the Marines the latter in Equivalents, the series of sentimentality is what made it raising the U.S. flag on Mt. Surib- of shots of clouds that he made at his modern and made it effective. achi during the battle for Iwo Jima, country estate near Lake George. In later years Strand taught at the the single most reproduced photo- The differences may have been Photo League, an important train- graph ever; Leonard Freed and Dan simply a matter of temperament, or ing ground in the 1930's and 1940's Wiener, who covered the violent may have had something to do with for a large number of photogra- confrontations of the early civil- socioeconomic background. In ei- phers. Many who studied and rights movement; Irving Penn, Mil- ther case, Stieglitz's example was not taught there came to be identified ton Greene, and Arnold Newman, so much emulated as defied. The with what critics came to call the famous for their fashion and celebri- movement away from his brand of New York School. This group exer- ty photography; sports photogra- refined aesthetics was recently well cised a sustained influence on many pher Nat Fein, who took the fa- captured by the photographer branches of photography-photo- mous picture from behind of Babe William Klein, who first made his journalism, art photography, fash- Ruth leaning on his bat at his reputation in the 1 950's with the ion photography, and portraiture. farewell appearance at Yankee Sta- publication of Life Is Good and Good Its members changed the way dium; Ezra Stoller, the country's for You in New York: Trance Witness Americans looked at their country preeminent architectural photogra- Reveals. Interviewed last year on the and at themselves. Although each pher; and Ben Ross, born Rosen- occasion of the book's reissuance- photographer had his own idiosyn- blatt, who was the best known avi- two exhibitions of his work were crasies and his own favored subject ation photographer in the post- held simultaneously-Klein wise- matter, certain shared tendencies World War II era. cracked: "There are two kinds of made it reasonable to refer to them In The Tumultuous Fifties: A View photography, Jewish photography as a school. from the New York Times Photo and goyish photography. If you look There was, first of all, an obses- Archives (2001), there is a picture of at modern photography, you find, sion with gritty realism, which fre- the twelve men who were the news- on the one hand, the Weegees, the quently meant pictures that were paper's staff photographers in No- Diane Arbuses, the Robert Franks- blurred or grainy or slightly out of vember 1951. To judge by their funky photographs. And then you focus. The rules of formal compo- names, at least half were Jewish, and have the people who go out in the sition were often violated, even Jews were similarly overrepresent- woods. Ansel Adams, Weston." flouted. And there was something ed on the staffs of many other pub- tough, occasionally brutal in the lications. At Life, for example, the STIEGLITZ WAS nobody's idea of work of the New York School: pic- first cover was by Margaret Bourke- funky. His protege Paul Strand, tures might be beautiful, but they White, and the most covers-101- however, produced work with were never merely pretty. were by Phillipe Halsman; Life enough elements of edginess to be The final thing New York School employed Alfred Eisenstaedt, Carl included in Klein's aphoristic defi- photographers had in common was Mydans, Robert Capa, and many nition. Born Paul Stranzky on the that nearly all of them were Jew- more. Upper West Side of Manhattan in ish-thirteen of the sixteen select- The list goes on through the 1890, he was taught photography at ed for inclusion in Jane Livingston's decades. Today it would include the Ethical Culture School by the standard text, The New York School: Annie Liebovitz and Mary Ellen great social documentarian Lewis Photographs 1936-1963 (1992): Sid Mark, Jeff Mermelstein and Joel Hine. At the same time he was im- Grossman, Lisette Model, Helen Meyerowitz, Joel Sternfeld and bued with attitudes that would take Levitt, William Klein, Weegee Cindy Sherman and Michael Ack- him ever more leftward, until poli- (Arthur Felig), Robert Frank, Louis erman. tics vitiated his art. Faurer, Ted Croner, Saul Leiter, Strand's early photograph Blind Leon Levinstein, Bruce Davidson, IN CONTEMPLATING the overwhelm- Woman (1917) had an enormous im- Diane Arbus, and Richard Avedon. ing presence of Jews among those pact. The picture is a close-up por- This is not to mention influen- represented in New York: Capital of trait of a woman wearing a peddler's tial Jewish photographers of the Photography, the critic Richard license and a placard that says, time who were not associated with Woodward remarked that "the Jew- "BLIND." One eye is mostly shut the New York School: Ben Shahn ish imprint on 20th-century pho- and cloudy, the other open but wan- and Arthur Rothstein, for example, tography... would seem to be too dering to the side; the grim, oval who worked for the New Deal's remarkable and contentious a topic face is framed by a black shawl and Farm Security Administration along to be ignored by scholars much backed by massive granite building with (the non-Jews) Dorothea Lange longer." I agree. Before the scholars

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arrive, though, let me take a stab at at lyric poetry. Within photography, ists," but that is a pallid epithet for it by offering something less than a and leaving aside Stieglitz and one the strong and often very particular full-fledged etiology but, I hope, or two others, they have pursued hu- passions that were at play. more than just a list of pertinent man-interest subjects, frequently A brief interchange ten years ago contributing factors. concentrating on areas with a strong did much to fix my own under- Among those factors, Woodward political, ideological, or news value. standing of the orientation of Jews is certainly right to observe that Jews have also leaned toward arts in photography in the 20th century. most of the Jewish photographers with mass audiences-a natural cor- I had organized a colloquy on the now considered important worked relative of their tropism toward the subject, and at one point in the dis- in commercial areas, especially photo- new technologies that made such cussion I asked, "Why was it that of journalism, advertising, and fashion. mass audiences possible. Photogra- all the ethnic groups in New York In other words, they had to earn a phy may not have been as classy a City in the 1930's and 1940's, it was living, and found they could do so pursuit as painting on canvas, but its the Jews who took it into their with a camera: it takes very little products got to be seen everywhere, heads to go to Harlem and photo- capital to set up shop as a photog- by everybody. It was an art form that graph the blacks there?" Naomi rapher. affected public opinion, changed Rosenblum, a teacher and the au- The commercial habits absorbed perceptions, and could, it was hoped thor of A World History ofPhotogra- by these photographers stood many by some, change attitudes as well. phy, promptly replied, "We weren't of them in good stead in their later And it was nonverbal, an advantage Jews; we were leftists." careers. Most of the work in for those otherwise disqualified Rosenblum is a reliable informant. Richard Avedon's recent show- from the opinion-molding profes- During those decades, her husband which confirms both the talent that sions by an immigrant accent or a Walter was involved with the Photo made him famous and its limita- less than perfect command of En- League, some of the time as its pres- tions-was done on assignment. glish. ident. The League, whose member- Weegee is remembered for the ship was overwhelmingly Jewish, work he produced on the job as a FOR MOST Jews in the late 19th and championed documentary photog- news photographer. Bruce David- early 20th centuries, photography raphy with explicit social and politi- son supports himself by shooting itself was hardly something un- cal objectives, and frequently spon- advertisements so that he can pur- known or "foreign." In both West- sored projects in Harlem. In 1947, sue the projects for which he is best ern and Eastern Europe, pho- U.S. Attorney General Tom Clark known. tographs were exchanged as a means included the League on a list of "to- Of course, other impoverished of maintaining ties with distant fam- talitarian, fascist, Communist, or sub- immigrant groups-Irish, Italian, ily members, and portraits of famous versive" organizations. Although Hungarian-could have followed or revered personalities adorned many contemporary photographers the same route upward, but did not. many Jewish homes, including the of stature-from Ansel Adams to W Here is where another element en- most pious. Photography had been Eugene Smith to Dorothy Lange- ters in: the tendency of Jews in the absorbed into Jewish culture, both came to its defense, the blacklisting last century to be drawn to activities high and low, and fully legitimized. led to the League's dissolution in the exploiting brand-new technologies. Nevertheless, Max Kozloff right- 1950's. Whether or not the League These included not just photogra- ly notes a peculiarity about the Jew- was actually a Communist-front or- phy but also the movies, records, ra- ish photographers whose work ganization is unclear to this day, but dio, and television. What attracted dominates his New York: Capital of it was certainly left-wing, and many Jews to such new arts (or businesses) Photography:with few minor excep- of its members, including the charis- may have been the absence of a so- tions, they "did not depict other matic Sid Grossman, were certainly cial structure functioning to keep Jews." In this, they were like many Communists. them out. The territory was open to other second- and third-generation Leftism provided these Jews with whoever got there first, and who- American Jews, eager to escape a way of seeing. They could photo- ever got there first was also free to what they perceived to be a confin- graph blacks, and migrants, and define the territory's boundaries, in- ing ethnic ghetto and more than derelicts, and gangsters, the dispos- cluding its boundaries of taste. willing to jettison whatever religious sessed and the homeless, because Jews have also tended to be drawn baggage they had inherited. Pho- they had a social framework in to artistic genres that examine soci- tography, for them, was a way out of which these subjects could be un- ety as opposed to those defined by a parochial Jewish environment into derstood. The same framework more formal or abstract considera- what seemed to be larger, more uni- could be applied to their shots of tions; they have been more success- versal, worlds of art and politics. the high and mighty, the celebrities, ful at writing plays and novels than Kozloff refers to them as "human- the successes of commerce and pol-

[47] COMMENTARY JANUARY 2003 itics and popular entertainment. of Diaspora (2000). A few years ago, automatically translate into superior But, however the vestiges of their an exhibit by Yves Mozesio, Varieties work. Shekhina, the exhibit by Leo- religion may have disposed them to of Religious Experience: Photographsof nard Nimoy, best known as Star Trek's have sympathy for the downtrod- Jews at Work, offered portraits of Mr. Spock, that has been on display den, they had nothing to say about observant Jews taken where they in the Skirball Museum of Hebrew their own. They wished to be invis- earn their livelihoods, with com- Union College in New York, has pic- ible to themselves as Jews or, at any ments by them on how their faith tures of naked women wrapped in rate, not to use their art to make affects the way they do their jobs. prayer shawls and phylacteries. The their presence as Jews known to There are other, comparable pro- work, we are told, draws on kabbala, others. ("We weren't Jews; we were jects, and more appearing all the but it has less in common with Ju- leftists.") There was no counterpart time. An important figure in the daism than with New Age spirituali- among them to, say, Roy De Cara- movement is Neil Folberg, who ty, which is to authentic religion what va, who throughout his career has grew up in San Francisco, studied kitsch is to real art. photographed blacks in domestic photography with Ansel Adams, be- In her book The Particularsof Rap- settings with charm and affection. came a "returnee" to Judaism, and ture: Reflections on Exodus (2001), the now lives in Jerusalem where he contemporary biblical exegete Aviva AN INTERESTING turn in the last runs the country's only gallery de- Zornberg suggests that what lies at decade or so, however, is that a voted exclusively to photography. the heart of artistic creation-Zorn- number of talented Jewish photog- Like his teacher, Folberg uses a berg's immediate subject is the build- raphers have committed themselves large-format camera and is able to ing of the tabernacle in the desert, as to long-term projects of Jewish con- imbue images of buildings and land- described in the book of Exodus-is tent. The dean of them is probably scapes with great spiritual depth. In "a sustained concern with time and Bill Aron, whose book, From the public lectures on And I Shall Dwell memory, a fascination with both the Corners of the Earth (1986), contains Among Them (2001), his book of pic- timeless moment of full presence many beautiful images of Jewish rit- tures of synagogues, he has cited the and the subtle gifts of temporality ual practice. Lori Grinker, an Torah and Talmud and later rabbinic and process." That phrase, "the award-winning combat photogra- authorities in formulating what timeless moment of full presence," pher, has taken time out to produce amounts to an aesthetic grounded in has its own mystical tinge to it, but The Invisible Thread: A Portraitof Jewish learning. to me it also sounds like what great Jewish-American Women (1989), and The new interest in Judaism on photographers try to capture in their Joan Roth has traveled around the the part of Jewish photographers has work. ThatJewish artists, photogra- world working on a similar project. echoes in other arts: the novels of Al- phers among them, should be look- Penny Diane Wolin combines vin- legra Goodman, the music of Daniel ing to their tradition for inspiration tage photographs with her own Asia, the paintings of Tobi Kahn. and usable structures is a develop- work in The Jews of Wyoming: Fringe Perhaps needless to say, it does not ment of some significance.

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