The Photographs of a Mythical 19th Century Jewish Immigrant
The Contemporary Jewish Museum // October 17, 2020 - March 21, 2021
January 21, 2021 | in Photography
We think you'll like
Los Angeles-based artist Stephen Berkman’s immersive photography installation,
Predicting the Past: Zohar Studios, The Lost Years, is a tribute to Shimmel Zohar, a mythical nineteenth-century Jewish immigrant photographer, founder of Zohar Studios. The exhibition includes over thirty photographs, several large installations, a cabinet of curiosities, and a large format artist book about the Zohar project. These uncanny photographs take the visual codes of nineteenth-century portraiture as their point of departure, and the images and objects address both Jewish life and the scientific state of understanding over one hundred years ago. Together, they create an idiosyncratic vision of Victorian life in the United States, revitalizing bygone technologies and themes within a twenty-first century context. Through his work, Berkman shows that history is malleable and contains a multiplicity of meanings.