Habitus

by Daniel Bloch · 12/28/11

From "The Block," by Romare Bearden

Here’s what’s on our mind this week:

Urban renewals

If you haven’t guessed by now, we love a good city story, and here are a few: Read Shelley Salamensky’s insightful look at “Diaspora Disneys,” re-creations–and, in some cases, renewals–of urban Jewish life and culture in Krakow, Birobidzhan and a town in western Spain. Follow cookbook author and food blogger Alex Schmidt as she enlists her bobe Dora on a hunt for Jewish soul food in Mexico City. Check out Madrid’s version of the High Line, part of an enormous project that includes new parks, plazas, transit options and a rebirth of the Manzanares river. Finally, be sure to take a look at the Best CityReads of 2011, courtesy of The Atlantic Cities.

Literary musings

Habitus contributor and friend Susan Bernofsky remembers Robert Walser, who died on Christmas Day, 1956. The New York Times considers the Bible’s overwhelming literary legacy through the ages. And the daughter of Ezra Pound fights to have her father’s name disassociated from an Italian right-wing group connected to the recent shooting deaths of Senegalese immigrants in Florence.

Cinematic intimacy

Tintin and Margaret Thatcher biopics not your thing? Have no fear: Dau, a grandiose doozy of a film about the life of physicist Lev Landau is already five years in the making; here is a preview/exposé from GQ. (Warning: lie down before you read this because you will need to afterward.) On a smaller scale, Papirosen, the latest film from Argentine director Gastón Solnicki will screen at the Museum of the Moving Image next month. For the film, Solnicki–who will appear in person at the screening–distilled hundreds of hours of footage of his extended family to a brief 74 minutes, charting their lives in Buenos Aires and beyond.

Portraits

Photographer Gisèle Freund captured Virginia Woolf and James Joyce in eerily timeless color images, but photographing the star writers of her day was only part of her fascinating journey. We salute abstract artist Helen Frankenthaler, who passed away this week at the age of 83. And a special cosmic shout out to Romare Bearden, whose centennial is currently being honored at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Jazz at Lincoln Center, the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture and the Studio Museum in Harlem.

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by Michael Sterling · 12/05/11

This December marks the twentieth anniversary of Pedro Meyer‘s legendary multi-media photography exposition I Photograph to Remember. Meyer’s intimate collection of photographs documents his parents’ struggle with cancer.

The first of its kind, I Photograph to Remember originally could only be viewed on a computer screen. The exposition was housed, so to speak, on a CD-ROM; the photographs of Meyer’s family are accompanied by music and narration. “The narration, and the use of my voice,” says Meyer, “made a huge difference in how this work was perceived. It is precisely because of the inherent limitation of the photographic medium, that the presence of the voice picks up where the photograph couldn’t tread. I made sure that the narration would always be a complement to that which was self evident in the picture, thus adding to the story being told while not competing with the image.”

I Photograph to Remember is featured in the Mexico City issue of this magazine.

View the original project as it was intended to be seen in 1991 here. See an essay Meyer wrote in 2001 about I Photograph to Remember here. Visit Meyer’s website here to see his most recent work.

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by Habitus · 02/13/11

Our dear friend and contributing editor Ilan Stavans is featured in the Amherst Bulletin for his work on the epic Norton Anthology of Latino Literature.

Stavans approached Norton about doing the anthology after the Norton collection on African-American literature was published in the mid-1990s. But he said the germ of the idea probably first came to him when he was doing his doctoral work at Columbia University in the 1980s. He was struck by the contrast between the “quiet, serious” atmosphere of study at Columbia of classic Spanish writers like Cervantes, while in nearby Spanish Harlem, there was a very different world of Latino street life and culture.

“I remember thinking, ‘I need to pay more attention to this kind of vibrant street culture,’” he said. “I began in some probably unconscious way to think of bringing these two worlds together.”

Congratulations, Ilan, on this extraordinary accomplishment.

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by David Gutherz · 11/22/10

There are those who say we are entering a new Hellenistic era. America, in this scenario, is the new Greece while The Internet has replaced Alexandrian chariot paths. And so, it is fitting that recent Habitus contributor Pedro Meyer’s new exhibition at the Athens Hellenic American Union A Long and Personal Trip Throughout the USA close with a roundtable discussion entitled, “Art and the Internet.” The new exhibition features some of the best of the approximately 80,000 photos Meyer has taken over thirty years criss-crossing the United States.  In addition to the photographer himself, the closing panel on the 24th will feature  photographer Nadia Baram, poet Dimosthenis Agrafiotis,  and Tina Schelhorn, curator of the Galerie Lichtblick, Cologne.

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by David Gutherz · 10/04/10

Let me guess: you’ve already finished reading and re-reading our new Mexico City issue and are hungry for more! Well, if you live in Nueva York, you’re in luck. Just head over to the Aperture Gallery on 547 W. 27th Street and check out Mexico City contributor Monica Ruzansky’s beautiful contribution to the “Mexico + Afuera” exhibit. “I loved Monica Ruzansky’s furtive and romantic snapshots of Mexico City nightscapes,” writes Maria Lokke of the New Yorker, “taken by the light of her car headlights over the course of two years…Driving at night, the theatrical focus of the lights transformed the city into a stage, the resulting images becoming ‘fragments of stories to which we are tempted to imagine a beginning and an end.’”

Monica’s photos–along with those of Chuy Benitez, Dulce Pinzón, and the acclaimed Modernist photographer Paul Strand–will be on display until October 21st.

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by Habitus · 09/29/10

Our new issue on sale now! Order yours today.

Some highlights include:

• An incendiary excerpt from an anonymously penned novel, The Stuttering Terrorist, about an attack on a Mexico City synagogue

• Pedro Meyer, one of Mexico’s most prominent photographers, remembers the deaths of his parents
• The Mexican-American writer and critic Ilan Stavans imagines an “autobiography” of his own face
• Photojournalist Katie Orlinsky rides the trains with migrant workers
• The controversial artist Yoshua Okón tells us how he implicates his audience through humor
• Monica Ruzansky creates portraits of Mexico’s Jewish adolescents
• Novelist Margo Glantz talks about a lifetime of loving and longing for beautiful shoes

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by David Gutherz · 09/16/10

On this day, 200 years ago,  Father Miguel Hidalgo gave the sermon of his life. “My children:” he cried, “a new dispensation comes to us today. Will you receive it? Will you free yourselves? Will you recover the lands stolen by three hundred years ago from your forefathers by the hated Spaniards? We must act at once… Will you defend your religion and your rights as true patriots? Long live our Lady of Guadalupe! Death to bad government! ”

With these words, which came to be known as the Grito De Dolores (after Hidalgo’s parish site) or Grito De Independencia, the Mexican struggle for independence officially began. It is worth noting, too, that despite the obviously Catholic character of Hidalgo’s words and goals, this day was also a significant event in the life of Mexico’s Jews. For the war against Spain also meant a war against the Holy Office of the Inquisition in Mexico, which–after a failed attempt at its abolition–embarked on its last reign of terror from 1813 to 1820. And so, during a holiday season where many have found it difficult to celebrate, perhaps we could all pause to appreciate this connection between the nationwide ringing of church bells today, and blowing of shofars on Yom Kippur.

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by David Gutherz · 09/13/10

“I would hold my mind hostage if I didn’t allow it to wander. I don’t like making mistakes on facts and avoid them as much as possible. But erring is human. Much worse is making the mistake of not daring…”

Ilan Stavans–friend of, advisor for, and repeat contributor to  Habitus–is known for being something of a literary omnivore. In an academic environment where, as Mordechai Drache says, “scholars know more and more about less and less,” Stavans’ list of interests (and interesting publications!) grows longer and longer–wider and wider. Which is perhaps why it so surprising to hear him admit that, until 2004, he “had never read the Bible as a book.”

Then again, reading through excerpts of Stavans’ most recent work, “With All Thine Heart”–a collection of interviews between him and M. Drache on love in the Bible–one gets a taste for the benefits of being a “late-bloomer” in Biblical matters. For Stavans finds things in the Bible that would never occur to your average “specialist.” To him, The characters of Genesis and Exodus are not specimens to be dissected but friends. Friends who have to be introduced to all the other pals Stavans made over the years studying the literature of Kafka, Singer, Cortazar, Borges, and many, many others. In short, its a wild, wild party–and, thanks to Drache, we’re all invited.

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by David Gutherz · 08/31/10

Margo Glantz, whose piece “Shoes: Andante With Variations” appears in our most recent issue, has just been awarded the 2010 Literature Prize in Romance Languages at the Guadalajara International Book Fair. In a statement released with the award, the jury lauded Margo’s “extensive literary career,” her ability to combine fluidly the “language of different disciplines” and commented that, “Margo Glantz has demonstrated that Latin American identity is a finished and unfinished journey of multiple social realities that generate a moving continent giving language its force and its multiple connections to the world.”

We couldn’t have put it better ourselves!

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by Joshua Ellison · 08/26/10

If you need a taxi in Mexico City, you must follow the rules. First, never hail a cab on the street, even though hundreds could rocket past you in a given hour. Locals will tell you this with the certainty of death itself. They might do it from time to time— to save a few pesos or just for convenience—but they are horrified that you, a visitor, would even consider something so reckless. Everyone has a story to tell about a terrifying crime, usually a kidnapping but sometimes worse, that happened to someone who got into the wrong taxi.

Call your cab from a reputable dispatch. Some safety-minded people, and every tourist guidebook, will tell you that this isn’t enough: you need a few extra precautions. When you call the dispatch, ask for the taxi’s official registration number and the name of your driver. When the car arrives and you confirm the driver’s identity, take a look at the registration and, finally, make sure that number matches the license plate. If everything checks out, then you can be serenely on your way.

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