For many, the best-known photobook about the Jewish experience is Roman Vishniac’s "A Vanished World" (1983) – a melancholic document of Jewish life in Poland before the Holocaust. Yet countless photographers turned to the medium of the photobook after World War II to capture vibrant Jewish life as well as to document Jewish communities they felt were on the brink of extinction. In this interactive workshop, participants will examine a range of photo books and discuss them on the level of form (image selection, sequencing, layout), content, and materiality. As we consider the legacies of Vishniac’s paradigm of “vanishing Jews,” we will also explore what alternative questions photobooks raise about picturing Jews in the 20th-century diaspora.

Space is limited; please RSVP to secure your spot here: https://myumi.ch/z93My