Habitus

by Justine Poustchi · 03/13/12

From the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee

Hungarian Jewish writer Akos Kertesz’s recent condemnation of Hungary’s role in the Holocaust has led to a “political campaign”  against him, forcing the 80 year old writer to seek asylum in Canada.

Sam Jordison muses on the future of literary translation, noting the success of the works Hans Fallada, a German writer whose work explores his country’s dark political history, that leaves Jordison wondering what else he may have been missing out on.

Adam Gopnik takes a look at the dramatic and often hallucinatory ending of the Christian Bible: The Book of Revelation. Decoding the mystical vision, Gopnik reveals the text’s satirical caricature of the Roman Empire that, as Elaine Pagels argues in her latest book, is the result of a distinctly anti-Christian polemic that strived to maintain the early Jesus movement’s Jewish roots.

Fragments of Human Existence 

Drawing connections between Victorian pseudo-science and surrealist photography, Jacob Mikanowski’s article paints a complex portrait of the creation of writer Bruno Schulz’s cosmos and his obsession with matter.

The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, a relief and rescue organization, is embarking on a project to digitize their extensive archives of the 20th Century Diaspora that includes over 500,000 names and 100,000 photographs. Take a look at some gems from their collection, which includes photos of painter Marc Chagall a young Leonard Bernstein, here.

New York contributor Arnon Grunberg “embeds” himself in different social groups that range from a Dutch family’s vacation to armies in Iraq and Afghanistan. As a part of a recent exhibition of his work in Amsterdam, Grunberg is seeking interesting ideas for new journalistic projects that you can be a part of. More information on the competition, which closes on March 18th, here.

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by Justine Poustchi · 03/05/12

From http://www.albertkahn.co.uk/

Uncovering History

Albert Kahn, one of the earliest color photographers, traveled to over fifty countries to document the rich cultural diversity in the years before the First World War. Taking a look at his work, Maria Popova explores the way his photographs helped frame complex cultural narratives that had been reduced to “caricatures.”

For a group of Catholic Hispanos in Colorado, a breast-cancer gene reveals an ancient Jewish past, forcing the women to confront changes not only to their bodies but also their heritage. Elie Dolgin takes a look at Jeff Wheelwright’s exploration of the gene that plagues the women as religion, race, and DNA intersect.

Interpreting History

Home to the shrine of three faiths, Jerusalem has a history that is characterized by prophetic utterance—or more recently, pseudo-prophetic babbling. The phenomenon, labeled Jerusalem Syndrome, provokes a fascinating look at the psychosis engendered by the holy city on the people who believe God is speaking to them.

Ruminating on the future of Holocaust literature Stuart Kelly praises the work of Nathan Englander and Shalom Auslander, calling for more work that subverts the “monolithic narrative of victimhood.”

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by Daniel Bloch · 01/27/12

Courtesy of fotosencontradas.com.ar

Here’s what’s on our mind this week:

Reclaiming home, warts and all

“Pinch your nose and off we go,” advises novelist and Habitus contributor Aleksandar Hemon in this month’s issue of Guernica Magazine, as he leads us through the “deep shit pit of war, peace and politics in Bosnia and Herzegovina.” Hemon unflinchingly examines the foreboding trend of ethnicity-based education in the former Yugoslavia. (See our Sarajevo issue for more from the region.) “Do three or more passports make you alive several times over?” wonders Irin Carmon in a fascinating meditation on citizenship and family, as she explores her acquisition–and potential loss–of a German passport. “Where they fled, we globetrot, a historical asymmetry that parallels the other privileges earlier generations earned for us.” (See our Berlin issue for more on contemporary German Jewish identity.)

Life in pictures, lost and found

Be sure to check out three captivating photo essays: Jessica Ingram’s “A Civil Rights Memorial” captures the often un-memorialized sites of hope, resistance and violence scattered throughout the South that, once re-discovered, provide vivid insight into the struggle to end segregation. Polish photographer Rafal Milach has followed the lives of seven young Russians as they find their way amidst ever-shifting landscapes. And Hiroyuki Ito, whose work has largely focused on New York, his home for the past 20 years, documents his return to Japan following the death of his father.

And don’t miss out on browsing through the hundreds of random photographs found on the streets of Buenos Aires–namely the Once neighborhood, the one-time center of Jewish life in the city–collected and loosely curated here. It’s at once an entertaining and unsettling experience.

From Yiddishkeit

Sketches of Idisshu

Now that our New York issue is about to come out, we have time to catch up on some recent books we missed. One of our favorites is Yiddishkeit: Jewish Vernacular and the New Land, co-edited by the late, great Harvey Pekar. The book is a colorful consideration–through comics and essays–of secular Yiddish culture through the ages, focusing on the artists and writers who helped revive the language in the diaspora, especially in New York. And another new book that we just might actually get a hold of someday is the Yiddish-Japanese Dictionary/Yidish-Yapanish Verterbukh/Idisshu-go jiten, which runs over 1,300 pages and was compiled by one of Japan’s foremost Yiddishists. Who knew?!

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by Daniel Bloch · 01/10/12

Myrtle Avenue, Brooklyn / William Gedney

Here’s what on our mind this week:

From the scribes

Poet, translator and Habitus contributor Lisa Katz offers an intriguing who’s who of contemporary Israeli poetry, from more well-known writers like Agi Mishol (featured in our Budapest issue), Dan Pagis, Yitzhak Laor and Taha Muhammad Ali to relative newcomers (at least for those of us who are stateside) like Anat Zecharya, Almog Behar and Admiel Kosman.

In Shalom Auslander’s new novel, Hope: A Tragedy, the main character, already besieged by a slew of problems in his daily upstate-New York existence, discovers Anne Frank herself living in his attic. Auslander discusses the connotations of this here.

And Etgar Keret’s story, “Creative Writing,” finds a husband and wife spinning fantastical tales.

Through the viewfinder

We said goodbye this week to Eve Arnold, who passed away at 99. The daughter of a rabbi, Arnold was the creator of iconic images of celebrities (perhaps most famously, Marilyn Monroe) and ordinary folk alike, and one of the first female photographers to be hired by Magnum.

In another, more gradual goodbye, the photographer William Gedney documented the demolition of the Myrtle Avenue elevated subway in the late ’60s and early ’70s, and the reshaping of the landscape beneath it, all from his apartment window.

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by Daniel Bloch · 01/04/12

Courtesy of Project Neon

Happy new year! Here’s what’s on our mind this week:

Start 2012 off with a few fascinating reads: The Shifting Boundaries of Jewish Identity: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Multiple Identity Narratives and Histories explores both new and familiar nuances of what it means to be Jewish. BOMBlog considers the rollicking and largely fabricated legacy of Octobriana, a Soviet-era cartoon bombshell. And philosopher John Gray offers a thoughtful antidote to doom-and-gloom scenarios created by recent socio-political change.

And the latest in city-speak: Economist Edward Glaeser celebrates cities as catalysts for “collaborative brilliance.” SoBro vs. ProCro? The Atlantic Cities finds out what’s behind the art (or lack thereof) of (re)naming a neighborhood. The Manhattan grid system design just turned 200, and the Museum of the City of New York is honoring it through April. And finally, what’s lovelier than a frigid New York night lit up by neon?

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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 Daniel Bloch · 12/05/11

Boris Kossoy, "Protest against the Vietnam War, New York, 1971"

As we begin December, here’s what’s crisp and new this week:

Back in the USSR (and out of it)

One of the more interesting obituaries in recent memory noted the the death of Lana Peters, AKA Svetlana Alliluyeva, AKA Svetlana Stalina, the daughter of Joseph Stalin. The Guardian examines her legacy as a “cold war plaything.” Meanwhile, Tablet Magazine reconsiders Life and Fate, Vasily Grossman‘s magnum opus about Jews who survived the Holocaust only to find themselves under Stalin’s rule. Tonia Ben-Barak, grandmother of acclaimed Israeli novelist Meir Shalev, lived through both tragedies.She is the subject of Shalev’s recently-translated memoir, My Russian Grandmother and Her American Vacuum Cleaner. Take a look at a review and an excerpt.

Contributors’ Corner

The latest New Yorker features an essay by Aleksandar Hemon, whose work graces our Sarajevo issue. In other news, Ana María Shua‘s Death as a Side Effect was published in her native Argentina nearly twenty years ago, and has finally appeared in English. Read a recent review featured on Three Percent, the blog wing of Open Letter Books. For more of Shua’s work in English, check out our Buenos Aires issue.

Through the Lens

The Aperture Foundation has released a volume on contemporary Latin American photography aptly titled, The Latin American Photo Book. Our friend Marcelo Brodsky is one of many contributors to this fascinating anthology, which includes Boris Kossoy, the Brazilian photographer who has taken evocative pictures of New York (see example above). And speaking of evocative pictures of New York, be sure to look  “Out Harvey Wang’s Window,” now on view at the Tenement Museum‘s new exhibition space at 103 Orchard Street. Click here for a preview of Wang‘s striking portraits of the Lower East Side in flux.

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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 · 11/27/11

Arthur Leipzig, Chalk Games, Prospect Place, Brooklyn

Here is a round-up of what we’re excited about this week and think you will be, too:

On Our Shelf

Read an excerpt from Umberto Eco‘s latest novel, The Prague Cemetery, which deals with the legendary anti-Semitic tract, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Take a look at what the New York Times and the Washington Post think about it. And make sure to read (and watch) what Eco himself has to say.

Uncanny Valley: Adventures in the Narrative is a collection of essays–on everything from digital animation to writer’s block–by Lawrence Weschler, director of NYU’s Institute for the Humanities and Habitus board member. Check out an interview with Weschler, read a review of the book and tune into a talk he gave at the Open Society Institute.

André Aciman, a fellow Habitus board member, contributor, and friend, has written a new memoir, Alibis: Essays on Elsewhere. Read the New York Times review, as well as the feature on Tablet Magazine, which includes an excerpt.

The work of Argentine writer Sergio Chejfec has finally appeared in English, thanks to Open Letter Books, which published his My Two Worlds this summer and plans to release his The Planets next year. Take a look at the Words without Borders review of My Two Worlds and the recent interview with Chejfec in Guernica Magazine. Look for more from Chejfec in our upcoming New York issue.

 Jews with Cameras

Photographer Joshua Cogan has traveled the world in search of far-flung Jewish communities, from Gondar in Ethiopia to Kochi in southern India. Check out his evocative photos as featured in the Forward.

The Radical Camera: New York’s Photo League, 1936-1951 is now on view through March at the Jewish Museum and profiles the dynamic Jewish photographers who combined their art with social commentary and found a new way of looking at New York. For more, take a look at our recent conversation with Daniel Morris, author of After Weegee: Essays on Contemporary Jewish American Photographers.

From Nowy Targ to Zuccotti Park

Translationista, the blog of author and translator Susan Bernofsky, features a fascinating personal essay linking a visit to her grandmother’s hometown in Poland to Bernofsky’s experiences in Zuccotti Park with the Occupy Wall Street movement. Be sure to check out the recent interview with Bernofsky in Book Forum, and our Berlin issue, which features her translation of Jenny Erpenbeck.

-Compiled by Daniel Bloch and Michael Sterling

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by Michael Sterling · 11/21/11

In 1922, Sioma Lifshitz set off for China. He was a twenty-year-old Russian who became disillusioned with the political aspirations of the 1917 Revolution. He would spend the next thirty years in Shanghai, launching a career as a high-class photographer under the pseudonym Sam Sanzetti. Today, Lifshitz is heralded by many as one of the best photographers ever to have worked in Shanghai. When he left for Israel in 1957, he carried in his suitcase some 20,000 photographs that he had taken during his career.

Lifshitz–calling himself Sanzetti–opened his own photography studio in 1927 on Nanjing Road, a commercial street near the Bund, the tourist center and financial district in Shanghai. He photographed all manner of people: celebrities, film stars, young couples, children.

Lifshitz is famous for saying, “You could have found me in Honolulu, if that happened to be the destiny of the ship.” He was speaking of his decision to leave Russia when, quite impulsively, he boarded the next available ship to somewhere. In Shanghai, he apprenticed under an American photographer who taught him the craft, and soon thereafter Lipshitz began to work as Sam Sanzetti.

Lifshitz died in Israel in 1986. For years, his photography was unavailable for public viewing and his name had all but faded from memory. Now, the Israeli consulate in Shanghai has headed the effort to reinvigorate Sanzetti’s name and well-deserved fame in Shanghai.

The consulate hopes to find the stories behind the photographs. They’ve posted many of Lipshitz’s photographs on their Weibo—a Chinese version of Twitter—in hopes that someone will recognize who is in the photograph. Within days, the Weibo post has had thousands of hits and the consulate has received many calls with possible leads.

Oren Rozenblat, the deputy consul general of Israel in Shanghai said of the project: “It will be beautiful to see at the exhibition a very old lady standing in front of her picture as a young bride.”

Visit the Israeli consulate in Shanghai’s website on the digital exhibition here. Satellite Voices, an international photography forum, features some of Lipshitz’s work as well. Read the related article in the China Daily here.

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