one family
Since 1992 I have been systematically documenting my immediate family: parents, aunts and uncles, brothers, cousins, their children and grandchildren, four generations of post-Holocaust Israel. The key picture of the project is that of my mother and her two sisters, three consecutive numbers tattooed onto their forearms.
In the framework of this documentation project, I have travelled throughout Israel and even beyond it to meet up with members of my family. I have crossed ideological and spiritual borders. I have moved between kibbutzim in the north of the country to settlements in Judea and Samaria, between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, between the ultra-Orthodox bastion of Bnei Brak and Copenhagen, between Hebron of the settlers and Savyon of the affluent. My travels have taken me from the left to the right and from closed ultra-Orthodox neighborhoods to the homes of confirmed atheists.
The exhibition One Family is an interim summing up of the first fifteen years of the project. It is the story of one family that represents a broad cross-section of Jewish Israeli society in all its factions. One Family is literally my life’s work. literally, not metaphorically. This is a picture of our complex lives here in this land at this time.
Read more in about one family
One FamilyPhotographs of Vardi Kahana
The Holocaust was “Ground Zero of the Greenwald-Kahana family.” In the midst of the murderous fury of 1944 three
Three Sisters, 1992 by Vardi Kahana Courtesy Andrea Meislin Gallery
sisters were tattooed with consecutive numbers in Auschwitz. They were lucky; they survived while so many of their family perished. The sisters found their way to Israel where they met men, married, had children who had children who will have children. They have rebuilt the Jewish people from the ashes and one talented offspring, Vardi Kahana, born in 1959, has documented the history of her diverse family over the last 15 years. Four generations slowly emerge from her majestic photographic essay of close to 100 black and white photographs, captured in a book published by the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, many of which were shown recently in New York at the Andrea Meislin Gallery. This series of photographs is called ‘One Family’ and yet is a telling portrait of the contemporary Jewish people, the Israeli experience writ large, “the entire spectrum [that] comes to represent Israel in its current, multifaceted reality.”
Vardi Kahana possesses a visual intelligence that illuminates the majority of her photographs. Her extensive photographic work in newspapers and periodicals finally led to the position of editorial photographer for the weekend magazine of Yedioth Ahronoth that she has held since 1995. She recently had a solo exhibition at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art and has shown in many group exhibitions including many international venues and the Israel Museum. Her closely studied portraits are a veritable who’s who of Israeli political, entertainment, sports and artistic leadership. From prime ministers, IDF Chief of Staff, and politicos to poets, actors and authors, the entire spectrum of Israeli leadership has come under the scrutiny of her lens. Whether shot in her studio or in carefully chosen locations, each portrait manages to penetrate the personality of the sitter even as it preserves and forcefully expresses, through exquisite composition and lighting, their public role.
She did not hesitate to use her considerable skills when she decided to document her family in 1992. She started with her mother, Rivka and her two sisters, Leah and Esther. While the tattooed numbers, A-7760, A-7761 and A-7762 become the defining motif linking the photograph with a terrible past, it is the intense gaze of the three sisters, each different in character and equally transfixing, that brings this image into the inescapable present.
Three Brothers, 1992 by Vardi Kahana Courtesy Andrea Meislin Gallery
Quickly thereafter she photographed her father Aharon and his two brothers Moshe and Yehezkel, all three of whom had escaped Europe before the war. Their image is less riveting and yet the compositional strategy of two suits and two hats framing the hatless Moshe provides a mini-narrative of sibling camaraderie and distinction. The common history of the 3 brothers and 3 sisters, and the fact that all had come from the town of Beregszaz, Hungary, made them the natural foundation of a new clan transported to the safe haven of Israel. As one moves through the exhibition and more extensive photographs in the book it becomes obvious that Kahana has documented not a typical snapshot family history of births, celebrations and deaths; rather the diversity of Israel itself emerges as a historical and sociological process.
Pointedly each photograph locates where the family member was portrayed. Each link expands the restless dispersion of the family from the original six founders. We see no less than thirty different locations that these four generations call home in Israel, not to mention other family members in Denmark and the Netherlands.
In the Shomron they include Ateret, Alfei Menashe, Kiryat Sefer, Psagot, Maaleh Michmash and Nofei Prat. The Tel Aviv area is represented by Petach Tikva, Ramat Hasharon, Neve Tsedek, Bnei Brak and Ramat Gan. Some of the family is in Hebron, Susya and Arad while in the north they are found in Safed, Meron, and Kibbutz Lehavot Habashan in the Hula Valley. Along the northern coast their relatives are in Kibbutz Cabri near Nahariya , Kfar Masaryk near Acco and Kiryat Bialik in Haifa. Further south they are found in Karkur, north of Hadera, Caesaria, Herzliya, Savyon and Moshav Hagor near Kfar Sava. Finally some family members who used to be in Ganei Tal in Gaza were photographed before the expulsion.
Surveying this far-reaching map of family members reveals that Kahana’s project is as much about geography as photography. And of course in Israel geography instantly translates into ideology and theology. Vardi Kahana’s family ranges from pierced and tattooed secular individuals to religious Zionist and Haredi families. The viewer becomes uncomfortably aware of which images we associate with and which images we reject or condemn because they don’t fit our ideals of Israeli life. Once we see them, though, we cannot erase them and therefore they challenge our notion of the ideal with the real. All from one family.
Malki’s Family, 2005, by Vardi Kahana Courtesy Andrea Meislin Gallery
One image captivates us by its disparity. “Malki, cousin Yaki’s daughter, with her husband Oren and their children Shira and Eyal” at Ganei Tal, Gush Katif. Here this attractive young woman, her husband and their young two children pose before a barbed wire fence, one that at first glance they are on the outside of. The fence separates them from their dangerous neighbors and yet, why are those houses on the other side so nice and, after all, which side are they on?
Yehuda’s Family, 2007 by Vardi Kahana Courtesy Andrea Meislin Gallery
Other relatives present other views. “Yehuda, cousin Eta’s son, with his wife Renat and their children Uri, Hallel and Adi” are seen near their home at Alonei Habashan on the Golan Heights. They stand without a fence, this family of five proud Jews before the five modern windmills that seem to frame them, to protect them even as we know that the Golan, too, is politically vulnerable. Again Kahana’s compositional skill is evident as the size relationships between their three children (two little girls, one older boy), the middle-sized mother next to a rather tall and substantial husband Yehuda are directly echoed by the differently sized and positioned windmills. These photographs don’t just happen, they are carefully posed, positioned and cropped to make them visually narrate.
Vardi Kahana has created a far-reaching sociological portrait of the Israeli Jewish people through the lens of her own extended and diverse family. There are far too many intelligent, artful images of secular, traditional, yeshivish, and Haredi family members to do justice to the powerful scope of this project.
Just as the covenant of Torah and Land to the Jewish people was finally fulfilled not by lone individuals but rather through Jacob’s family; Kahana’s One Family suggests that contemporary Israel and the Jewish people will be built up and sustained by the vitality and diversity of the Jewish Family. These powerful photographs are living proof of this reality.
One Family
Photographs of Vardi Kahana
Selected Images: Columbia / Barnard Hillel
The Kraft Center for Jewish Student Life
606 West 115th Street, (B’way)
Photographs of Vardi Kahana
Selected Images: Columbia / Barnard Hillel
The Kraft Center for Jewish Student Life
606 West 115th Street, (B’way)
Andrea Meislin Gallery, 526 West 26th Street, #214;
Kahana’s work at vardikahana.com
Kahana’s work at vardikahana.com
- Posted in: Artists, Andrea Meislin Gallery, Museums / Auction Houses, Photography, The Kraft Center for Jewish Student Life, Vardi Kahana
About the Author
Richard McBee
Richard McBee is a painter and writer on Jewish Art.
His artwork may be found at Portfolio and you may view his resume by clicking here (to be added).
His artwork may be found at Portfolio and you may view his resume by clicking here (to be added).
Jaarlijks maken we miljarden familiefoto’s. Een verzameling van vooral gelukkige momenten. Maar wat als de blik van fotografen op familie kritischer wordt? Van 3 april t/m 5 juni presenteert FOTODOK, de internationale plek voor documentairefotografie in Utrecht, de tentoonstelling There is Something about My Family. Want wat is tegenwoordig onze definitie van familie? De opening is op 3 aprll, omdat het programma een onderdeel is van de Culturele Zondag is toegang dan gratis.
Artistiek directeur van FOTODOK Femke Lutgerink vond familie een actueel onderwerp om te belichten; “In Nederland wordt er door een terugtrekkende overheid meer beroep gedaan op familie, terwijl dit bij ons de afgelopen decennia juist minder vanzelfsprekend was. Ook de enorme diversiteit in hedendaagse familiesamenstellingen geeft spanningen; persoonlijk, maar eveneens maatschappelijk door de botsing van culturele en religieuze waarden. Dit alles was genoeg noodzaak om een tentoonstelling over familie te ontwikkelen.”
Internationaal
In There is Something about My Family tonen vijftien makers hoe familieverbanden worden beïnvloed door migratie, oorlog, ideologieën en andere (grote) veranderingen in de samenleving. Ook alledaagse en herkenbare familierituelen en hedendaagse familiesamenstellingen komen aan bod. Met werk van Michael Anhalt (DE), Sara Blokland (NL), Vicky von der Fuhr (NL), Vincent Gouriou (FR), Pieter Hugo (ZA), Eddo Hartmann (NL), Marjolein Busstra en Rebekka van Hartskamp (NL), Vardi Kahana (IS), Anaïs López (NL), Paulien Bakker (NL) en Anisleidy Martinez (CU), Petra Mrsa (HR), Ad Nuis en Arthur van den Boogaard (NL), Uljana Orlova (NL), Judith Quax (NL), Jana Romanova (RU) en Phillip Toledano (UK).
Fotografen over familie
Veel van de makers zijn zelf onderdeel (geworden) van de soms ongemakkelijke omstandigheden en familiebanden die zij vastleggen. Zoals het werk van Phillip Toledano (VS) die in When I was Six verhaalt over het verlies van zijn grote zus en de gevolgen hiervan op zijn familie. Of het werk van Anaïs Lopez (NL) die In my dreams I want to become a tourist samen met een filmmaker en schrijver twee Ruandese broertjes volgt bij de hereniging met hun moeder. Michael Anhalt (DE) laat in twee werken zien wat de consequenties zijn van de keuze van zijn ouders om het toenmalig Oost-Duitsland te ontvluchten. In de foto’s van Eddo Hartmann (NL) van zijn ouderlijk huis, dat hij op 14-jarige leeftijd samen met zijn broer en moeder ontvlucht, vertellen de interieurs hun verhaal. Jana Romanova (RU) duikt in Shvilshvili (kleinkind) in de familiegeschiedenis van haar Georgische oma die vermoord werd door een neef. Uljana Orlova (NL) toont werk over de asielprocedure die zij en haar moeder doorliepen in de jaren negentig. Meer informatie over de fotografen is te vinden op www.fotodok.org.
Opening
Op zondag 3 april om 14:00 uur wordt de tentoonstelling There is Something about My Family officieel geopend door wetenschapsjournalist Malou van Hintum. De opening is een onderdeel van het programma van Culturele Zondag en is daarom gratis toegankelijk. Vanaf 12:00 zijn er activiteiten zoals een fotostudio waar op eigenzinnige wijze familiefoto’s worden gemaakt van bezoekers. Er zijn minicolleges van twee wetenschappers van de Universiteit van Utrecht die beiden onderzoek doen naar familie; Drs. Osen Figan Tuncer en Dr. Marjolein van den Brink. Ook worden de winnaars van de FOTODOK Scholieren Award 2016 officieel bekend gemaakt. Ruim 400 Utrechtse scholieren doen mee met deze wedstrijd met hun eigen fotodocumentaire over familie. Tijdens de opening is de tentoonstelling gratis toegankelijk. Er worden pannenkoeken en poffertjes gebakken voor de hele familie in het hofje voor FOTODOK. Kijk voor meer openingsactiviteiten en tijden op www.fotodok.org.
