Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu presents the nuclear secrets of Iran at a special press briefing in Jerusalem on April 30, 2018. (photo from IGPO courtesy Ashernet)
It has been a year of diplomatic success for Israel, as more countries upgraded their relations with the Jewish state. This took, in general, two forms: heads of government making an official visit to Israel or Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu visiting other countries; and the establishment of the embassies of the United States, Guatemala and Panama in Jerusalem, Israel’s capital.
In April, at a special press conference hosted by Netanyahu, the world learned of the secret storage facilities in Iran that housed Iran’s nuclear ambitions. It is not known exactly how Israel managed to find out the location of the files, or how they were copied and brought back to Israel, but the revelations served Israel well, and the files were instrumental in making the United States renege on the nuclear agreement that President Barack Obama had made with the Iranian regime.
It was a long, hot summer in more ways than one. The latest form of terrorist aggravation was for Gazans to assemble in the thousands along the Gaza-Israel border and launch kites and balloons to which were attached flaming torches that set fire to forests and agricultural fields in Israel, causing uncountable damage and destruction. A variation of this procedure was for terrorists to attach flaming torches to lines attached to the legs of kestrels who managed to survive long enough to set trees alight in Israeli forests near the border.
In better news, this year Israel became the focus of the world’s cycling fraternity. Due to the generosity of Israeli-Canadian billionaire Sylvan Adams, one of the three most important annual cycling races in the world, the Giro d’Italia, started in Jerusalem with a time trial and then took the cyclists from Haifa to Tel Aviv, with a third stage from Be’er Sheva to Eilat. All this was made possible by an $80 million donation to the federation organizing the event. It was one of the biggest sporting events ever staged in Israel and was seen by tens of thousands on television around the world.
The Jewish year opened with the announcement that one of the most outstanding mosaics ever found in Israel, from the Roman era, was going to be incorporated in a new museum in the city of Lod, where it had been found during preparations for building works. This beautiful mosaic was one of many important archeological finds in Israel in the past 12 months.
Also at the start of the Jewish year, tourism in Israel hit a new high, with the three millionth tourist of 2017 arriving at Ben-Gurion International Airport in November. And, this summer, Prince William made an official visit to Israel, where he was received by President Reuven Rivlin and Netanyahu. Members of the British Royal family have been to Israel before, but never on an official visit.
As always, Israeli technology, universities and medical prowess was remarkable over the year. And, when natural disasters occurred around the world, such as earthquakes and floods, Israel was among the first to send aid.
Not all the news was good for Netanyahu, who, for a major part of the year, was being investigated and questioned by Israel Police for allegedly obtaining inappropriate large-scale benefits from businessmen – charges Netanyahu strenuously denied. Ari Harrow, Netanyahu’s former chief of staff, signed a deal to become a state witness to testify against the prime minister.
The Jewish year also saw Netanyahu’s wife Sara receiving a lot of negative press. In the previous year, the Jerusalem Labour Court awarded an employee of Sara Netanyahu’s the sum of $46,000 as he claimed that she had been abusive towards him and withheld wages at times. While she appealed the ruling, it was turned down. She is now being investigated for allegedly ordering expensive meals at the prime minister’s official Jerusalem residence at government expense, despite the fact that the prime minister’s official residence employed a cook. She refutes the accusations.
Despite these problems, Binyamin Netanyahu maintains a high international profile – he has the ear of presidents Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, for example.
As 5778 closes, Israel has the pleasurable problem of deciding how best to market the huge natural gas finds that are presently churning about below the waves of the Mediterranean Sea, well within Israel’s exclusive continental shelf.
With his photos, Liron Gertsman hopes to raise awareness of environmental issues. (photo by Liron Gertsman)
Recent Vancouver high school graduate and award-winning photographer Liron Gertsman is heading to the University of British Columbia to study biology. His main passion is taking photos of nature, particularly birds, in the hope of sparking in viewers feelings of love and awe for the environment, leading to improved conservation.
“I believe people need to see the natural world if they want to protect it, so I try to do that through my photos,” Gertsman told the Independent in an interview.
From as young as 5 or 6 years old, Gertsman spent a great deal of his spare time walking around his neighbourhood, keeping an open eye.
“Around that time, my parents gave me a blue miniature camera,” he recalled. “Right from the start, I began taking pictures of birds and nature … and it grew and grew until, when I was 12, I bought my first personal DSLR camera equipment. And, since the very start, I’ve loved birds and have been fascinated by their behaviours … and have done my best to photograph them.”
Gertsman’s love of nature does not seem to have come from his parents, who are both businesspeople. His dad is a real estate tax consultant and his mom is an accountant.
“It was a big combination of things,” said Gertsman. “A lot of it was self-learning things – reading on the internet, reading books, and there were [other] influences because the bird-watching community is very large…. I would go attend bird walks and meet people that way. My Grade 2 teacher was a really big environmentalist and created an environmental conservation club at school.”
Now that he is heading to UBC, Gertsman is not sure if he will integrate photography with research on birds, or if he will become a professional nature photographer.
“There are a lot of biologists who use photography to document their work,” he said. “They’re doing work that is hopefully going to benefit conservation and they need photographers, or they, themselves, will document their own work … to put it into a format that is easier for people to comprehend. Hopefully, I’ll get involved in some research projects – maybe over the summers – that will allow me to do things like that…. But, I’ll see what calls me more in the years to come and make a decision in a few years.”
Gertsman posts his photos on his website and social media accounts, and some have won contests. Most recently, three of his photos were recognized by the Audubon Photography Awards, winning the youth category prize and honourable mentions.
“It’s a great way to show more people your work, show them the beauty of nature,” said Gertsman. “Some of my photos have been featured, in the past, in magazines and in web articles.
“We are at a point now in the world where, if we don’t change something big … we’re going to be heading into some dark times. The environment is at a very unstable point right now. Our actions in the next little while are going to have a big impact on whether there’s going to be nature and a natural environment to live in, in the years to come.
“Everything we have as people comes from nature,” he continued. “Without nature, we can’t survive. But, it can be hard for people to understand that. It’s not a direct link. If you cut down a tree, it’s not going to have an impact on most people’s lives.”
But, on a larger scale, it matters. “So,” he said, “what I’m trying to do is, by photographing the natural world in the most beautiful way I possibly can and showing it to as many people I possibly can, I’m trying to educate the world the best I can on how incredible the environment is and how worth protecting it is.”
This past spring, Gertsman was in Israel, one of the most amazing places in the world for birdwatching, as “all the birds migrating from Africa to Europe pass through in Israel,” he said.
There are many ways people can help promote the environment, he added. “You can help me spread my message – tell your friends, share my website, follow me on social media, my Instagram. I post, almost every day, my latest pictures on Instagram. Hopefully, through that, I’ll be able to reach more people.
“It’s increasingly difficult to motivate people to do things individually, but individual action can have wide affect. When a government adds a regulation, it has an impact and, when regulations are taken away, that too has a huge impact. So, in the way we think about our political leaders, there’s something we can do as a nation there.
“But also, just on an individual scale, cutting down on driving, not using plastic straws … little things, like carpooling, things you do every day can make a big difference. And, just spreading the message of how amazing nature is, and getting out and enjoying nature yourself.”
Jannushka Jakoubovitch, a Holocaust survivor, looks at her portrait, taken by Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer Marissa Roth, part of the Faces of Survival exhibit at the VHEC. (photo by Pat Johnson)
Two new original exhibits opened at the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre recently, concurrent with the opening of the centre’s redeveloped space.
Following the annual general meeting of the Vancouver Holocaust Centre Society for Education and Remembrance on June 20, attendees moved from the Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver’s Rothstein Theatre to the Holocaust centre for the official opening of the exhibits and a first look at the revamped space. (An article on the centre’s renewal project will appear in a future issue.)
Both exhibits emphasize local relevance of broader Holocaust history.
In Focus: The Holocaust through the VHEC Collection includes items that the Holocaust centre has assembled over decades. Thematic aspects of Shoah history are illustrated through documents, photographs and artifacts. Interactivity is incorporated through replica items in adjacent drawers, which visitors can handle and explore. Electronic kiosks encourage deeper and broader exploration of topics, including cross-referenced databases that connect, for example, all holdings related to an individual, a place, an event or other search query.
Among the items on display are a yellow Star of David worn in the Theresienstadt camp in Czechoslovakia, a fragment of a prayer book burned during Kristallnacht in 1938 and found on the street in Berlin after the violence temporarily subsided, and a photo album of life in the Netherlands under Nazi occupation, created from negatives that were developed in 1981 and donated to the VHEC.
Also on display is a Torah scroll from Prague, which, along with 100,000 other Czechoslovakian Jewish religious objects, was gathered by the Central Jewish Museum in Prague at the behest of Nazi officials.
A souvenir pin from the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin, featuring a replica of the Brandenburg Gate, and a porcelain figurine of an idealized Aryan woman produced around the same time speak to that portentous international sporting event.
Artifacts from life in hiding include a wooden toy dog that belonged to local child survivor Robert Krell. Among the most unusual items on display is a chess set modeled from chewed bread and sawdust, then painted and varnished.
“These finely articulated pieces are believed to be the work of a Polish Jewish man interned in the Warsaw Ghetto,” according to the exhibit descriptor. “He likely offered the set to a soldier stationed as a guard in the ghetto, in exchange for food.”
Photographs illustrate life in the ghettos, life in hiding and the “Holocaust by bullets,” the process of mass murder in Eastern Europe perpetrated by Einstatzgruppen (Nazi death squads) and collaborators.
Also on display is a recipe book compiled by Rebecca Teitelbaum, the aunt of Vancouver-area Holocaust survivor Alex Buckman. While working in a Siemens ammunition factory in the women’s concentration camp Ravensbrück, the exhibit explains, “At great risk of being discovered and killed, she stole pencils and paper to record her recipes and those of other inmates.”
A child’s shoe recovered from the Kanada barracks at Auschwitz II-Birkenau is on exhibit. “This shoe, belonging to a child of age 3 or 4, was retrieved after the Second World War. Young children deported to Auschwitz were among the first to be selected for the gas chambers. An estimated one million Jewish children were murdered by the Nazis and their collaborators during the Holocaust – 220,000 children died in Auschwitz alone.”
Also on display is a letter, dated April 20, 1945, from U.S. soldier Tom Perry to his wife Claire after arriving in the liberated Buchenwald concentration camp.
“I want to write you tonight about one of the most moving experiences I’ve ever had, as well of as one of the most horrible things I have ever seen.… With the idea not of pleasing you, for what I saw there was really too horrible to be seen by any decent human being. But with the thought that as my wife you would want to share with me my most horrible as well as my pleasant experiences. And because I think the rest of the family and our friends should know from personal observations what bestial things the Nazis have done, and what a dreadful menace they have been to people all over the world.” The letter proceeds in graphic detail.
The second exhibit is even more intimately connected with the local community. Faces of Survival: Photographs by Marissa Roth consists of portraits of British Columbians who survived the Shoah. Roth, a Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer who created a similar exhibit at the Museum of Tolerance / Simon Wiesenthal Centre in Los Angeles, took portraits of survivor volunteers, including both past and present VHEC outreach speakers and board members. In cases where the survivors themselves have passed away, the portraits feature family members holding a photo of the survivor.
The subjects were asked two questions: “Why do you think it is important to remember the Holocaust?” and “What message do you want to convey to students?” From their answers, captions were created to accompany the portraits in the exhibition, which was made possible by the Diamond Foundation.
Accompanying Agi Bergida’s portrait are the words: “My great hope is in the young people, the new generation. Racism is ignorance, to which the answer is education.”
Marion Cassirer, who died in Vancouver in 2014, is pictured in a photograph held by her daughter, Naomi Cassirer. “The Holocaust happened a long time ago, but for our family and for many others, it never ended,” said her daughter. “Marion spent the rest of her life speaking to groups about her family’s experiences, hoping that people would learn and understand that no society is immune.”
Serge Haber said, “It is important to remember the Holocaust because it can happen again, and it can happen here.”
A photograph of the late Paul Heller, held by his daughter Irene Bettinger, is accompanied by her words: “Dangerous human behaviour continues to this day, including antisemitism. Every one of us must participate in efforts to combat such behaviour if our freedoms and democracies are to survive.”
Accompanying Evelyn Kahn’s portrait are her words: “In a world where the media reports events absent of historical truth, the most essential tool becomes survivor testimony.”
The photograph of Peter Parker, who survived Birkenau and Dachau as well as a death march and died in Vancouver in 2015, includes words from his 1987 testimony: “Every human being has good and bad in them, we are capable of the highest noble things and the lowest deeds.”
Claude Romney, who survived in hiding, said: “We, as the last witnesses, have a duty to warn the world of the dangers of targeting any ethnic or religious group; for discrimination and persecution can lead to extermination, as it did under the Nazis.”
The late Bronia Sonnenschein was a survivor of the Lodz Ghetto, Birkenau and Stuthoff concentration camps and a death march from Dresden to Theresienstadt. Dan Sonnenschein, her son, said, “In her many years of Holocaust education, my mother honoured not only the memory of the murder victims and the other victims who survived, but understood the virulent intensity of antisemitism as ‘the longest hatred’ and the need to combat its current forms.”
Louise Stein Sorensen, a survivor of the Amsterdam Ghetto who survived in hiding, said: “The Holocaust teaches us to arm ourselves against the abuse of human rights.”
Both exhibits continue until next year, and information on opening hours and other details can be found at vhec.org.
After the routine business of the annual general meeting, Dr. Ilona Shulman Spaar, VHEC education director, presented the 2018 Meyer and Gita Kron and Ruth Kron Sigal Award to educators Sharon Doyle of South Delta Secondary and Julie Mason of David Oppenheimer Elementary in Vancouver. The award recognizes excellence in Holocaust education and genocide awareness in B.C. elementary and high schools.
Ed Lewin, past president of the organization, conferred life fellowships on Ethel Kofsky and Dr. Martha Salcudean.
Introductions and explanations of the new exhibitions, as well as of the renovated centre, were presented by Nina Krieger, VHEC executive director, architect Brian Wakelin, principal of Public: Architecture + Communication, and Shulman Spaar. Hodie Kahn offered reflections from a second-generation perspective.
Artist Dina Goldstein is a proven storyteller, so it’s not surprising that she was asked to take part in the exhibit Jewish Folktales Retold: Artist as Maggid, which opened at the Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco on Sept. 28. Metro Vancouverites will also have the chance to see her photographic interpretations of 11 “classic Jewish tales” – Snapshots from the Garden of Eden – at the Zack Gallery this month.
Jewish Folktales Retold was inspired by the book Leaves from the Garden of Eden: One Hundred Classic Jewish Tales by Howard Schwartz (Oxford University Press, 2008). As CJM executive director Lori Starr explains on the exhibit’s website: “Schwartz elucidates four varieties of these tales: fairy tales, folktales, supernatural tales and mystic tales. Fairy tales, he writes, are ‘fantasies of enchantment.’… Folktales ‘portray the lives of the folk as they imagined them, with … magical and divine intervention.’… Supernatural tales portray fears about the powers of evil entities and, finally, mystical tales are teaching stories of the great rabbis.”
“I was asked to participate over a year and a half ago,” Goldstein told the Independent. “At first, I discussed this with the curator, Pierre-François Galpin. At that time, I was planning on starting another series and I told Pierre-François that I just couldn’t take this on, as I saw it as quite an ambitious project.”
But, Goldstein was curious enough that she asked Galpin – who worked with CJM chief curator Renny Pritikin on the exhibit – to send her Leaves from the Garden of Eden so she could take a look.
“After receiving it,” she said, “I found that I really enjoyed reading these ancient stories. I told him that I could possibly photograph a few pieces as a contributing artist.
“I became intrigued by a few specific characters in the book and proceeded to take on more than I had anticipated at the beginning. I continued to photograph 11 pieces for the exhibit. I also decided to photograph the series in black-and-white large-scale tableau.”
Goldstein had free creative rein. “The museum did not give me any direction at all,” she said. “In fact, I came back to them with the chosen characters and ideas that I had for the retelling of these folktales. They did not see the work until it was completed.”
The characters Goldstein has reinvented for contemporary audiences include Lilith (from the story “The Queen of Sheba”), Elijah (“The Cottage of Candles”), Golem (“The Golem”), King Solomon (“The King’s Dream”), the Princess in the Tower (in the story of the same name), the positive spirit Ibbur (“The Soul of the Ari”), the malicious spirit Dybbuk (“The Dybbuk in the Well”), the Tree of Life (“An Apple from the Tree of Life”) and Ashmodai (“The Bride of Demons”). She has also created an image inspired by the story “The Hair in the Milk.”
“I selected characters that were relevant and reappear throughout many of the tales in the collection,” Goldstein told the Independent. “I chose characters from each of the four types of tales: folktales, fairy tales, supernatural and mythical tales.”
She created two images for Ashmodai.
“I very much enjoyed this narrative, ‘The Bride of Demons,’ with relevant themes of desire and retribution,” said Goldstein. “The story is quite long, so I wanted to create a diptych to illustrate and interpret it in my own way.”
The Snapshots catalogue explains, “A devil king, Ashmodai is mentioned in talmudic legends and Renaissance Christianity. He is regarded as the demon of lust and is responsible for twisting people’s sexual desires.”
In one of the Ashmodai images, a woman in a bridal dress looks happily at herself in a half-length mirror; there are other mirrors in the room, which show her from different angles. In the second image, we see what looks like a garden, with the woman, buried, screaming, only her head and bridal veil above ground. The quote accompanying this disturbing scene is, “… And he longed to look at her … but he remembered the words of the rabbi and did not turn his gaze away from the king of demons. If he had, he would have seen his bride buried in the earth up to her neck, for she was almost lost to the Devil.”
All of Goldstein’s tableaux are striking, fascinating to explore and contemplate.
“I very much enjoyed uncovering these richly textured ancient tales and short stories, which include magnificent characters: kings and queens, princes and princesses, witches, mystics and malevolent wandering spirits,” she said. “Each of the characters face extraordinary challenges – placed in front of them by fate – that they must overcome. Every society is replete with myths and legends that transform and bend into parables that attempt to make order of life. It is this impact on culture, old and new, that led me to create a body of work that plays with satire, metaphor and irony.”
Goldstein’s photographic creations challenge viewers’ perceptions, asking them to reconsider the stories they’ve been told. Her collections include Fallen Princesses, which imagines how 10 of Disney’s princesses would face the challenges of real women; In the Dollhouse, which focuses on Ken and Barbie’s not so happily ever after; Gods of Suburbia, which brings various deities down to earth; and Modern Girl, which looks at consumerism in Western culture using the imagery of Chinese pinup girls from the 1930s.
The creative process for Snapshots from the Garden of Eden was similar to that of these previous works.
“I do my usual research online and then I hit the library for historical references,” said Goldstein. “I like to get a sense of how these characters have been depicted in art throughout history, what has been written about them from various sources. Many of these characters are actual historical figures. Others are supernatural and exist in various forms throughout the stories.”
It took her eight months to produce and photograph the series, she said. “Much of my work is in preproduction, organizing the cast and crew, the locations, and collecting all of the props and costumes and details that are germane to the final result of the piece.”
She concluded, “I am very fortunate to live in the city which has so much talent to utilize. All of the cast and crew are from Vancouver. I reached out on Facebook and social media to find all sorts of strange items – people pulled together to help out. I am thankful to Gordon Diamond, who has been a great supporter of my work throughout the years. Gordon will donate the series for viewing at the Jewish Community Centre in December.”
And, because of that, local community members will have the chance to see Goldstein’s work at the Zack. Snapshots from the Garden of Eden opens Dec. 14, 7 p.m., and runs until Jan. 20.
Through education and remembrance, the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre engages British Columbian students, educators and the broader public with the history of the Holocaust – the Shoah – and its ongoing relevance. Building on the VHEC’s achievements as Western Canada’s foremost Holocaust teaching museum, the centre’s renewal project, currently underway, will reconfigure the centre’s space to better serve the community and advance the organization’s vital mission.
The preservation of the VHEC’s collection of artifacts, and their use in support of Holocaust education in the post-eyewitness era, has emerged as a new area of emphasis for the future. To provide access to its archival collections and to better meet the needs of students and educators, the centre is proceeding with needed infrastructure upgrades, with support from the Government of Canada (Canada 150 Cultural Infrastructure Program), the Province of British Columbia (British Columbia/Canada 150: Celebrating B.C. Communities and their Contributions to Canada) and the Jewish Community Foundation.
The project will feature temperature and humidity-controlled archival storage and display facilities to enhance the visitor experience. The centre also looks forward to incorporating electronic access portals, which will allow visitors to interact with key themes in Holocaust history and with artifacts, documents and testimonies from the collections at the touch of a screen. Additionally, the VHEC is developing a designated audio-visual programming space that will allow Holocaust survivor outreach speakers – perhaps the centre’s most powerful, and certainly most in-demand, educators – to interact with students and participants in remote locations throughout British Columbia and beyond.
The VHEC renewal project will enable the centre to reach more students, to fulfil its obligation to archival donors and to engage in the time-sensitive work around ensuring that Holocaust-era artifacts from the community can be collected and integrated into exhibits and educational programs.
With plans for an eventual redevelopment of the Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver in progress, the VHEC is ensuring that key aspects of the renewal are modular and transferable, in the event that the centre relocates in the coming years. The renewal will build in flexibility and sustainability.
The VHEC looks forward to welcoming students, teachers and community members to its renewed facility in early 2018, and to using its improved facility as a platform for carrying out its programming and interacting with the community. Guests attending the Nov. 22 special event in support of the VHEC, called “Looking Back … Moving Forward: Expanding the Reach of Holocaust Education,” will learn more about the centre’s upcoming plans, and preview the inaugural exhibition that will open in its renewed space.
Featuring a commissioned series of portraits of VHEC Holocaust survivor volunteers, the exhibition will honour and put a human face on those who survived the Shoah and have contributed to the VHEC community. Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist Marissa Roth created a similar exhibition of portraits of Holocaust survivors associated with the Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles, currently on permanent exhibition at the museum. Inspired by this remarkable project, the VHEC is launching a documentation and exhibition project by Roth at an important time of transition for the centre and for Holocaust education.
The exhibition of black-and-white, matted and framed archival silver gelatin prints will be accompanied by biographical and historical information, and reflections on survival and the importance of education and remembrance. Representing and honouring the survivor volunteers who are no longer with us is an important aspect of the project, which will feature posthumous portraits – photographs of photographs of survivors, in some cases held by descendants.
Embodying the VHEC’s commitment to engaging with the past with eyes fixed firmly on the future, the renewal project and the Roth portrait exhibition will honour survivors, invite the participation of next generations and extend the reach of the VHEC’s work to new audiences, asking ever-more-challenging questions of how we extrapolate insights from history to navigate present-day affronts to social justice and human rights.
Nina Krieger is executive director of the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre. This article originally appeared in the centre’s magazine, Zachor.
A photograph of Deadvlei in Namibia, by Judi Angel, is part of the exhibit Eye Lines, at Zack Gallery until April 30.
Five years ago at Zack Gallery, Judi Angel had a solo show of photographs from her time as a volunteer in Asia and Africa. Most of her work from that period was portraits of people she met during her travels. By contrast, her new solo exhibit, also the product of her travels, features no people – instead, her latest works transform landscapes into geometry, into lines, colours and shapes. The title of the new Zack show, Eye Lines, reflects the artist’s new approach.
“Each photo in this show has a leading line,” Angel said in an interview with the Jewish Independent. “That line attracts the viewer’s gaze, builds a narrative. It takes your imagination on a journey. You look at the image and you ask questions. Where are we? Where are we going? How do we get there? What is beyond the frame?”
Her fascination with lines started in recent years. “I took a photography class on developing your own style,” she said. “I hadn’t noticed how much I use lines in my images until I went back over my photos, thousands of them. Then the lines emerged as something important, so I decided to exploit that direction and enjoy what comes of it.”
She doesn’t consider herself a professional photographer, despite the artistic quality of her photos. “Photography is a serious hobby for me. I’m not trying to make a living with it,” she said. “I want it to be fun and challenging. I’m looking for new ways to express my vision of the world.”
Awhile ago, she began experimenting with her craft. Layering, double exposure, conceptual photography and a new medium for her images – sublimation printing on aluminum – are only some of the new things she has played with recently. But finding unusual images and original angles are still her primary goals.
“Five years ago, when my husband and I volunteered in impoverished countries, my photos were like a documentary. Now, I want to experiment more,” she said. “We still travel, but the trips are shorter. We don’t want to leave home for long periods of time; we have eight grandchildren. But we often travel specifically to places I want to photograph, like Africa – it is a visual feast for a photographer.”
Earlier this year, she and her husband traveled to Namibia. “We went there particularly for photography,” she explained. A few photos in the exhibit come from one of the major Namibian tourist attractions, a ghost town, called Kolmanskop, in the Namib Desert. According to Angel, Kolmanskop was a mining town founded in the earlier 1900s by German settlers to mine diamonds. The miners built their town in their homeland’s style.
“It had all the amenities: a hospital, a casino, a school, even a ballroom,” she said. “Unfortunately, by the middle of the 20th century, the mine’s diamond production petered out and the town was abandoned.”
Today, only sand and tourists move among the empty buildings, and Angel’s photographs demonstrate the power of both. The desert irrevocably reclaims its own, encroaching on the former human dwellings, creeping in through broken windows and open doors. The rippling sand dunes inside the houses look eerie, almost alien beneath the pastel-coloured walls.
A different alien landscape meets the travelers outside, in the desert. Angel’s photos of the desert reflect the stark contrast of blue sky and yellow sand. The colours are blinding. “There is a new railway there, in the desert, but the sand always moves. It covers the rails every day and has to be constantly cleared,” she said. Her photograph of a sand dune a couple of metres high, piling across the straight line of rails, is awe-inspiring and achingly beautiful.
Another unique desert photograph sports three colours instead of two. A grove of dead trees stretch their long-dry branches upward, adding dark brown to the blue-and-yellow combination of the desert. “The trees have been there for 600 years,” said Angel. “The dryness of the desert preserves the wood from rotting and crumbling, so they just stand there.”
Most other pictures in the exhibit reveal architectural elements, as seen through the artist’s lens. Several of them are in the monochrome palette, while all the desert pictures use colour. “I like colour, especially the warm yellows, reds and blues, but sometimes, black-and-white is the only option,” she explained. “In my geometrical photos, black-and-white emphasize lines, while colours would be distracting.”
Her architectural photos are not precise copies of real life but rather an enhanced fantasy, a capriccio on an urban theme. One of her favourite image-manipulation programs is Photoshop. “Some photographers say that using Photoshop means cheating, but I don’t think so,” she said. “Photoshop is my tool, like paintbrushes for an artist. It has so many creative possibilities, and I experiment with them.”
Angel’s experimentations led her to join the Capture Photography Festival, and the current show at the Zack is part of the festival. Launched in 2013, this year’s festival presents photography at more than 70 galleries and community spaces throughout Vancouver.
“I like visiting their shows – so many outstanding artists,” said Angel, noting, “They have judges to ensure that every participating photographer and every exhibition are on a decent level.”
Eye Lines opened at the Zack on March 30 and will continue until April 30. To learn more about Angel’s work, visit judiangel.com.
Olga Livshinis a Vancouver freelance writer. She can be reached at [email protected].
The Intersection of Science & Art, now at Zack Gallery until March 24, features the works of Joanne Emerman and Mike Cohene. (photo by Olga Livshin)
The Intersection of Science & Art exhibit at Zack Gallery features the works of two artists – Joanne Emerman, professor emerita of physiological sciences at the University of British Columbia, for whom photography has been a hobby for decades; and Mike Cohene, whose woodcarving unfolded unexpectedly in the past few years, after a lifetime of other pursuits.
Emerman explained that, for her, science and art have always intersected. “I worked for 33 years in cancer research. I only retired four years ago. I’m a scientist. I often used my photo camera, attached to the microscope, to photograph cells.”
Her hobby, especially her photos of animals, seems an extension of her scientific imagery.
“My photographs show how animals adapt to their environment. Every feature you see in the pictures is a result of natural selection, the survival of the fittest,” she said. “The individuals with adaptations suited to their environment will live long enough to breed and pass down those traits to their offspring, whereas the individuals that don’t adapt will die off. For the natural selection to work, several factors must be present, including the overproduction of offspring. They must ‘reproduce like rabbits.’ Also beneficial are variations due to mutations. They increase the likelihood of survival.”
Because of her scientific leanings, Emerman tries to capture in every shot the most significant characteristics of each animal, the ones that contributed to the survival of the species, like the stripes of a zebra, the legs of a tortoise or the fins of a turtle. She also documents the endless variations in nature in her thousands of photo frames.
Of course, to photograph exotic creatures, she has had to travel widely.
“I’ve always traveled a lot,” she said, “all over the world, and photographed during my travels…. I love animals but I love them in the wild. I never photograph animals in cages. The pictures in this show are all of animals and birds in their natural habitat. I took them in the Galapagos Islands and several South African game reserves. I tried to get as close to the animals as I could with my camera.”
The quality of the images reveals Emerman as a master photographer, although she is mostly self-taught. “I never took any classes on photography until I retired four years ago,” she said. “Then I decided to learn, and enrolled in a basic photography course at Emily Carr. I thought I would know everything they had to teach, or almost everything – I mean, it was called basics – but I learned so much!”
Eventually, the time was right for this show, her first gallery exhibit. “I was retired. I thought, maybe I should exhibit my pictures. I never did before. I submitted to the Zack Gallery, and the jury accepted me.”
Another first for her was meeting Cohene. Linda Lando, the gallery director, introduced them.
“Linda said, ‘We have a wonderful carver. He carves fish and birds. His works will complement yours.’ She put us together,” explained Emerman.
Cohene’s artistic journey started in 2009.
“In the summer of 2009, I visited Steveston Farmers Market,” he recalled. “They had a booth of the local woodcarvers club. I looked at their works and thought, outstanding! I could never do anything like that. I’m not artistic, though I always whittled. Professionally, I had a clothing business until I sold it awhile back. The man in the booth talked to me and said, come to the club in September. You can do it. So I went.”
His first carving was a baby bear, and he loved it. After that came a dolphin and then some fish.
“I felt good about my carving but I wanted to learn more,” said Cohene. “I started attending woodcarving classes at the Richmond Carvers Society – enjoyed it so much, took a course at Emily Carr.” He also participated in an intensive 10-day workshop with world-renowned master fish carver Dale Barrett of Redmond, Ore.
Cohene carves what interests him: wildlife, fish and birds mostly. “I’m a fisherman, have been all my life, but I never studied the fish anatomy before. I caught a fish and tossed it into a bucket. Now, I catch a fish and study it: the fins, the tail, the colour of scales. I look at fish from a different perspective now.”
To carve and paint his creations as realistically as possible, he uses reference material. “I take photos of what I catch or search for photos online,” he explained. “Sometimes, when I take commissions, people send me photos of the fish they caught and they want me to carve it.”
An active member of the Richmond Carvers Society, he regularly participates in the carvers’ juried exhibitions in British Columbia and Oregon. He has already collected a few “best in the show” awards for his work. However, as with Emerman, the exhibit at the Zack is his first gallery show.
Cohene has a second line of woodcarving, totally unrelated to his life-like creatures: Judaica. “A couple years ago, I brought 12 kilos of olive wood from Israel,” he said. “Each piece of wood was reclaimed from trees that had been in the fire of Har Carmel. I make mezuzot and dreidels from this olive wood, and people like them.”
To learn more about his carving, visit his website, mikecohene.com.
The Intersection of Science & Art opened on Feb. 23 and runs until March 24. Emerman is given an exhibit-related talk – Looking through the Lens of a Microscope and the Lens of a Camera – on March 21, 7 p.m., at the gallery. The suggested admission is a donation of $5. For more information, visit jccgv.com/content/jcc-cultural-arts.
Olga Livshinis a Vancouver freelance writer. She can be reached at [email protected].
The Vancouver skyline, photographed and painted by Sharon Tenenbaum.
Sharon Tenenbaum is celebrating her 10-year anniversary – since becoming an artist photographer – with a solo exhibition at Zack Gallery. The exhibit includes photographs from a number of different series, an eclectic selection reflecting the progressive stages of her artistic journey.
“It’s the hardest challenge for any artist to constantly reinvent herself, both business-wise and creative-wise,” Tenenbaum said in an interview with the Independent. “Everything has a shelf life, so we have to come up with something new every few years.”
In the decade since she began, Tenenbaum has reinvented herself several times, although she never abandons her previous endeavors. Her first love was architectural photography, and it is still an important part of her artistic output.
“Maybe because I was an engineer before I became an artist, I like architectural photography,” she said. “You can take your time with buildings and bridges, come to them again and again, see them from many angles and in different weather. With people, it is transitory: a moment, and it is gone.”
Tenenbaum’s architectural photography has won awards. The most recent one came last year, when her Musical Reflections Hoofddorp Bridge Series won first place in the 2015 International Photography Award, in the category of architecture, bridges. All three photographs in the series are on display at the Zack.
“These three bridges, with musical names Harp, Lute and Lyre, are located in the small town of Hoofddorp, Holland, on the outskirts of Amsterdam,” Tenenbaum explained. “They were designed by the Spanish engineer and architect Santiago Calatrava. I love his works and I photographed them before.”
Although her architectural photography started as black and white, a few years later, she began painting the photographs. Her painting phase started with trees.
“I started with one image of a tree, a photo from Portugal,” she said. “Then, there was a maple tree outside my window; it was gorgeous in the fall. I wanted to convey its beauty with my image, too.”
These works are the result of a two-step process. First, Tenenbaum prints her photos on canvas and then she paints the canvas with acrylics. People coming to Zack Gallery will see several of these painted photos in the show.
After her tree paintings proved successful, Tenenbaum moved to paint a different kind of photographic imagery – the Vancouver skyline.
“I was inspired to do this after I saw a painter in Jerusalem about two years ago, Adriana Naveh. Her abstract urban landscapes were amazing. I was blown away by her work,” said Tenenbaum. “But not every architectural image submits well to painting. Sometimes, I try to paint something but it doesn’t work out. It’s hard to explain what works and what doesn’t. I think if the image is too architecturally clean, it needs the black-and-white palette.”
The examples of Tenenbaum’s painted skylines in the Zack show combine the technical proficiency of the photographer with deep emotional undertones echoing through the color schemes. The skyline might be of the same place – Vancouver – but each image is different, reflecting different facets of the artist’s inner self.
The Vancouver skyline fascinates Tenenbaum. Recently, she started a new project showcasing her favorite subject. She creates photo images of the skyline assembled exclusively from spare bicycle parts. She calls this new project Bike Art.
“I love biking and I always look for new and original ways to depict Vancouver. This project is a melding of my two passions,” she explained. “I use the recycled bicycle parts from the bike shops, the parts the shops would throw away. It’s a very time-consuming process, lots of work, and my place resembles a bike garage now, but it is very rewarding. I only have three images for now and I would like to get a grant to continue this project.”
Tenenbaum’s unique skylines made with bicycle parts are charming, quaint and amazingly authentic. One can see the ocean and Stanley Park, the skyscrapers of downtown and the masts of the marina, all created with recycled screws and bolts. “The viewers could interpret the images anyway they like,” she said.
But certain images are harder to fathom, like the image of an airplane flying above the clouds. The photo is just across from the entrance to the gallery, greeting guests with its mystery. “Many people ask me how I did it,” said Tenenbaum. “I always tell them: take my class and find out.”
Tenenbaum is eager to share her extensive expertise. She teaches students to use a number of photographic techniques to create fine art, to express their souls, and not just document what they see. With two different classes at Langara College plus some private tutorships, her teaching schedule is extremely busy, but she finds time for international workshops as well. “I have one in Chicago next year,” she said.
The show Sharon Tenenbaum – Architectural Fine Art Photography opened on Dec. 15 and continues to Jan. 15. For more information on Tenenbaum and her work, visit sharontenenbaum.com.
Olga Livshinis a Vancouver freelance writer. She can be reached at [email protected].
Ivor Levin’s path to artistic photography was a long and gradual one. “Photography is my hobby,” he said in an interview with the Independent, but one couldn’t have guessed it from his solo exhibition at the Sidney and Gertrude Zack Gallery.
Levin’s images reveal an artist’s perception. Where anyone else might see a dirty warehouse, he sees a play of light and shadows, a mosaic of colors and shapes. Peeling paint on a wall or a rivet screwed into corrugated metal transform under the magic touch of his camera into fascinating pieces of art.
By his education and day job, Levin is a dentist. By inclination, he is an artist, walking around Vancouver in his spare time with his camera, capturing amazing and unexpected pictures.
“I like simplicity,” he explained. “I don’t like cluttered images. All my images have one focal point. I’m interested mostly in two genres. One is urban geometry and abstraction: I look for patterns there, for lines and colors. Another is street photography: when I find an interesting geometric setting, I wait there until a person appears, walks into my scene, and then I take a picture. I don’t do landscapes or faces. No mountains. And absolutely no flowers.”
Levin said there was always a camera in the house when he was growing up. He snapped pictures during family gatherings, trips and holidays, but, in the last eight years, his passion for photography deepened.
“I started looking around with more of an artistic eye,” he said. “I also discovered Flickr and opened an account there, saw what other photographers were doing on the site and taught myself to achieve the effects I like. Gradually, people started noticing and liking my pictures, too. Friends and family were the last to notice, and they began saying: ‘Your photos are so interesting; why don’t you have a show?’ It happened about two years ago.”
The idea of a show took root and, last year, Levin applied to the Zack Gallery. “I sent them a link to my Flickr account, and they liked it. They offered me a show. It’s the first time I actually printed my photos. Before that, I only had them digitally, on my computer and on Flickr.”
The show at the Zack – called Simplicity – reflects the artist’s vision not only of Vancouver, his hometown, but also of some other places he has visited. One of his favorite hunting grounds for images is Granville Island, and a few of the images exhibited came from there. Others he found during his international travels, like “Overseas,” which originated in Cape Town, South Africa. “There is the ocean there, and a swimming pool on the other side of the walkway, and the sky above. Everything is blue, but different shades of blue. When I saw a woman in a blue dress on that sidewalk, I knew I had to take the picture,” Levin explained.
Most of his images depict bright and cheerful colors.
“I can appreciate black and white, too,” he said, “but only when the image demands it.”
One such image is his black and white street scene “Piano Man.” He shot it under an overpass in Brooklyn, and its punchy graphics are only slightly enhanced by computer editing.
“I rarely use the images straight from the camera, but most of my modifications are minor,” he said. “I adjust exposure and saturation. Sometimes, I crop or tilt the images.”
Unlike many photographers, he doesn’t use Photoshop, but rather the online program PicMonkey. He taught himself to use it, like he taught himself the other aspects of photography. “I learn from the other photographers’ photos and from some internet sites,” he said.
As the years go by, Levin spends increasingly more of his free time on his hobby, although he confessed that taking pictures absorbs him much more than the editing process. “I prefer creating with the camera, not with the computer,” he said. “I’m always on the lookout for the ‘Wow!’ factor. In the beginning, I kept everything, thousands and thousands of images. Now, I’m much more selective. When I see an image, I know: it’s a keeper. Otherwise, I just delete them.”
Titles for his images are also important to him.
“I’ve always liked to play with words, make puns. For me, it’s half the fun to find the right title for the image. Each one needs a catch phrase to catch the people’s attention.”
Despite his love for photography, he doesn’t have plans to abandon his day job.
“I like my job,” he said. “Of course, if I could make the same living with photography as I do as a dentist, I’d probably choose photography.” He didn’t sound too sure.
Simplicity is at Zack Gallery until Nov. 20.
Olga Livshinis a Vancouver freelance writer. She can be reached at [email protected].
Bob Prosser’s “Cuts” is part of the PhotoClub Vancouver group exhibit now on at the Zack Gallery.
Members of PhotoClub Vancouver don’t consider their photography a way to capture moments in life as they come across them, but rather as a complex, multifaceted art form. They experiment with their cameras, discover the limits of Photoshop, and modify their images in unpredictable ways. Their group show at the Zack Gallery demonstrates the results of their explorations.
The club was founded in 1998, “as an outgrowth of a photography course a couple years earlier,” said Bob Prosser, the club secretary responsible for organizing the show, in an interview with the Independent. “I wasn’t among the founding members, only joined in 2011, but I can tell that this club is unlike many others in Vancouver. It’s more informal, less competitive, with a constructive, supportive atmosphere. We encourage experiments, and our members subscribe to all sorts of styles.”
Prosser said that, at the moment, the club counts 28 paid members. “There are men and women among the club members; most of them middle-aged or retired. I guess, younger people may be look for a different environment, more social media-oriented.”
The club offers a variety of services and activities to its members. “We critique each other’s works, organize guest speakers and presentations on some inspiring masters of photography, offer technical workshops and field trips to some interesting places, like an Italian festival on Commercial Drive or a Pride parade,” said Prosser. “We organize shows every year, usually at a different venue, and publish books, the best of [each] year. We also have a challenge once a month, and everyone is invited to participate.”
Most of the club members are amateurs. “It’s almost impossible now to make a living as an artistic photographer,” Prosser said. “Everyone has a camera in his cellphone. A professional photographer should be so much more. He should be versatile, able to make video, websites, engage in social media, marketing. Some of our members do very well selling their photos to stock photo companies. Others do it simply for fun.”
Prosser resides firmly in the second category. He shoots lots of photos and participates in club shows, but sales are not his priority. “Of course, I photograph when I travel – just came back from a trip to Japan – and I make portraits of my family but, in general, I’m not interested in capturing people with my camera. I don’t like it when people pose. I prefer doing studio shoots: objects, scenes, and then playing with Photoshop, seeing what I can do.”
The club encourages such an approach, and Prosser relishes its easy atmosphere and its emphasis on experimentation. “I’m not interested in copying nature,” he said. “I try to convey a mood, a message. I want to move my photography towards abstraction, and I use Photoshop to push my photos in that direction, enhance them. I’m fond of impressionist paintings and I’m trying to achieve similar solutions. With software, you can combine several images in different combinations, change colors and shapes. Not all of it is even possible in painting – photography is a unique art form.”
His image “Cuts” in the exhibit represents the Cubist movement. The visual style and the method of execution overlap in the picture, creating a sharp, edgy feel, a scattering of cutouts on a red background. It could be an echo of our hectic lives or a reflection in a broken mirror.
Another fascinating Cubist image is the experimental self-portrait by Wayne Reeves, one of the founding members of the club. The older man in the image comes across as a jumble of conflicting angles, just like so many of us.
In contrast, a lyrical, lovely picture of mother and child inspires contemplation and promotes harmony. It belongs to Richard Markus, the current president of the club.
On the opposite end of the range of expressions are various landscapes and cityscapes. Some are earthy nature snapshots, bursting with colors. Others stress glass-filled urban architectural motifs. Still others are romantic and airy, like Terry Beaupre’s “Floating on Fog,” a dreamscape rising out of the mist.
The selection at the gallery encompasses a number of genres: portrait and still life, street scenes and travel mementos. While some photographs lean towards the traditional, others push the boundaries of the medium. Beside the colorful landscapes or abstract compositions, there are also a few images in the black and white palette. “In certain cases,” Prosser said, “color could get in the way of feelings. It could be a distraction, lessening the impact of the message.”
The group show opened on July 7 and runs until Aug. 6. For more information about the photo club, visit photoclubvancouver.com.
Olga Livshinis a Vancouver freelance writer. She can be reached at [email protected].