Mendoza

THE SOFER # 2

Each letter placed on the parchment of the Torah has to be perfect and any error will make the Torah unfit. Therefore one of the responsibilities of the sofer (specially trained scribe) is to check each letter and painstakingly rewrite the letters that may have faded.

From the photographic documentary 'From Generation to Generation' by Bernard Mendoza.

 

FROM GENERATION TO GENERATION

ARTIST STATEMENT

The Jews, it was once suggested by Mark Twain, represent, by their numbers, no more than  "...... a nebulous dim puff of star dust lost in the blaze of the milky way."

It was part of a commentary published in Harpers Magazine in 1899 (see attached) in which Twain inquired as to the secret of the Jews' immortality.

Some thirty years later the furor of Nationalism in Eastern Europe gave way to the venom and savagery of Nazism. 

Living in Berlin during that time was Roman Vishniac, a young Russian physician.  His passion was photography which led him to create a documentary for which he is most universally known.  Vishniac wandered Eastern Europe photographing more than just the depredation of a people, as he later wrote, "... it was my duty to my ancestors, who grew up among the very people who were being threatened, to preserve - in pictures, at least - a world that might soon cease to exist."

Thanks to such friends as Cornell Capa and Roger Straus, his pictures were eventually published by Schocken Books under the title ‘A Vanished World'.

Was Vishniac right?  Had the world of the Jew vanished 45 years after Twain posed the question of their immortality?

At war's end, with the world witnessing what remained of Hitler's ‘final solution', America eased its immigration policy, allowing some 400,000 refugees to start a new life in America.

A high percentage of these refugees were survivors from the "camps".  Speaking little if any English, they arrived carrying the scars of their torment, many still haunted by the question, where was God?  Once settled in their new country they found the answer to the question by assimilating and rejecting much of their Jewish culture.

My documentary is focused on those whose faith held strong.  The question for them was never "where was God" but rather, "where was Man?"  And for these Jewish émigrés there was never any wavering in their direction.  They were the lamp bearers of Judaism.  Opening learning centers and communities in all the major cities, they followed the only way they knew, the way their fathers and their fathers' fathers had lived from generation to generation.

Now, many of these Yeshivas and communities are led by the sons and grandsons of the original Rabbis.  Little has changed between Lodz 1937 and Los Angeles 2000, except maybe for the baseball-mitt and sneakers worn by the young Yeshiva students of today.

I hope my photographs go some way toward answering the question posed by Mark Twain, as well as holding testimony that Hitler did not win, that Dr. Vishniac's World did not vanish.

The world of the orthodox Jew is a world that is guarded tenaciously, a world where outsiders are greeted with great suspicion.  Accordingly, it allows the forces of xenophobia and racism to thrive.  Hopefully, the pictures I have produced will open the door for both Jew and Gentile to a world that would otherwise be inaccessible and, by doing so, shed a little understanding.

 "It is understandable when a child is afraid of the dark.
Not so for a grown man to be frightened of the light"  Plato

 

Bio

Born in London, I started my career as a photographer in the late '60s.  My studios in both London and Amsterdam attracted many top international commercial accounts that included Chanel Perfume, Clairol, Coty and Goya Perfume.  I opened an office in Houston, Texas, in 1980 to service clients such as Texas Instruments, Shell Oil and Conoco before moving to Hollywood in 1985 to direct television commercials with Vern Gillum and Friends Productions.

Over the past 15 years, I have spent less time working on commercial assignments and concentrated my energies toward reportage and documentary photography, including ‘From Generation to Generation' Hassidic Jewish communities in America.  This project which was partially funded through a Fellowship from the Colorado Council on the Arts and a grant from Steven Spielberg's Righteous Person's Foundation has been extensively exhibited, was included in the Smithsonian Institute's first on-line exhibit and is now part of permanent collection of the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, Texas..

Other documentaries have included ‘Portrait of a City Hospital' a documentary that looks at health care in America.  A portfolio of this work was purchased by the City of Denver for their Art in Public Places Program. 

‘The Projects are Dead, Long Live the Projects', a photo-essay on the last days of one of the housing projects in Los Angeles and the changing urban landscape;  ‘Mutt an' Man' - dogs and their owners; ‘Tripping the Light Fandango' - dance club hostesses;  ‘Benches' - the interrelationship between the bench advertising and the people who occupy the benches.

My current project Veya en Paz documents a community in East Los Angeles as it works toward reclaiming its neighborhood from gangs, guns and graffiti and ‘One Selling Religion' the ways different religions and sects promote their theology in public places.

During the 1990s, I developed and ran a highly regarded program for troubled teens, using photography as a tool for these youngsters to see their world and at the same time I was invited to be a grants panelist for Neighborhood Cultures of Denver, a nationally and community funded program, responsible for bringing the arts to low income areas. 

In 1995 and 1998 I was honored with a John Kobal Portrait Award and a recipient of both a  Fellowship from the Colorado Council on the Arts Fellowship and a grant from the Righteous Persons Foundation.  My work has been included in numerous publications that have included the Art Directors Index to Photographers, Denver Confluence of the Arts, the M.I.L.K. Trilogy books on Family, Love and Friendship and most recently was included in the University of Michigan Quarterly Review Fall 20002.

Since 1997, I have been asked to lecture and give workshops at various Universities, Colleges and Art Institutions on reportage and documentary photography.

My work has been exhibited and collected at such institution as The Smithsonian Institute; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas; Denver Art Museum, Colorado;  National Portrait Gallery, England;  The Royal Photographic Society, England; National Portrait Gallery, Scotland;  Editions de la Tortue, Paris;  The City of Denver Art in Public Places Collection;  Arts Council Southeast Missouri; Lincoln Center, Fort Collins;  Kaiser Permanente Art Collection, USA;  Imperial War Museum, London;  Hite Gallery, Louisville;  Robert I Kahn Gallery, Houston;  Mizel Museum, Denver;  The Art Center of Indianapolis; The Nash Gallery, Minnesota;  National Museum of American Jewish History, Philadelphia;  Vanderbilt Hall,  New York. 

Works published in books and magazines include amongst others - Denver Confluence of the Arts 1995 - the M.I.L.K. Trilogy books on Family, Love and Friendship 2000 - University of Michigan Quarterly Review Fall 2002.