Culture - Photography

How to photograph Jewish identity? The one that has disappeared, the one that is hidden and the one that is claimed? These questions are at the heart of the exhibition of the work of the great photographer Patrick Zachmann, on show at Paris’ Musée d’Art et d’Histoire du judaïsme until the 6th of March, and reviewed here by Avishag Zafrani. It is an opportunity to travel between the silent stories of the images in search of invisible genealogies. It is also an opportunity to question the aesthetics of memory.

Adolfo Kaminsky, born in 1925 in Argentina and deceased in January 2023, has become a legend: the resister and forger known for specializing in the manufacture of false papers during World War II. He wanted to be a painter, he became a secretive photographer, reluctant to show his work – before the Museum of Jewish Art and History (mahJ) in Paris shed light on dozens of snapshots taken over decadesIt is in partnership with the mahJ that the City Hall of Paris Centre is dedicating an exhibition to Adolfo Kaminsky until February 26, 2022.. A clandestine life, in his work as in his commitments: after the war, he makes false papers for the Haganah, he is the forger of the networks of support for Algerian independence in the 1950s and 1960s, that of the revolutionaries of South America as well as opponents of dictatorships in Spain, Portugal and Greece… The philosopher Elisabeth de Fontenay attests to her admiration.

Frédéric Brenner has spent the last three years exploring Berlin — a stage for a vast spectrum of expressions and performances of Judaism. ‘Zerheilt: Healed to Pieces’ is the name of the recently opened exhibition at the Jewish Museum in Berlin and the book that comes with it. It features images of equally fascinating and emblematic figures of a strangeness of the Jewish presence in Berlin today.