History is fickle. Who becomes known as great in their field, whose work is displayed in museums or taught in schoolbooks? When there is a tangible product – a building, a painting, a book, whatever – the chances seem higher that you’ll be remembered. But what if you were mainly a muse to others, what if you could enthrall audiences with your voice but never recorded an album, if you created works of art that people liked and even bought, but you didn’t create in the popular style of the day, or you were a woman in a man’s world?
Most readers will not have heard of Kiki de Montparnasse, born Alice Prin in 1901, in Châtillon-sur-Seine, about 240 kilometres southeast of Paris, to an unwed mother who wasn’t much into mothering. But most would likely recognize her – she modeled for many an artist (Alexander Calder, Tsuguharu Foujita, Amedeo Modigliani, to name a few, as well as Maurice Mendjizky, with whom she fell in love for awhile). And, during her seven-year relationship with surrealist photographer Man Ray (who thought himself more of a painter), she posed for him many a time. In 2022, one of Ray’s most famous images of her, called “Le Violon d’Ingres,” sold for $12.4 million, the most expensive photograph ever sold at auction.
Yet, what of her own work, her talents, her accomplishments?
Cultural historian Mark Braude gives Kiki her overdue due with his latest book, Kiki Man Ray: Art, Love and Rivalry in 1920s Paris, which Braude will discuss with University of British Columbia professor emeritus of history Chris Friedrichs at the JCC Jewish Book Festival on Feb. 24, in an event called Art & History: Paris, Jews and Surrealism.
While Kiki wasn’t Jewish, so many of the artists she hung out with were, including, of course, Ray, who was born Emmanuel “Manny” Radnitzky. If she hadn’t lived among the who’s who of Dada and Surrealist art, perhaps she wouldn’t have been overshadowed, mostly forgotten. She was a commanding performer, she sold at least a few dozen paintings, wrote a memoir, appeared in films. By all accounts, a success. But, as “Queen of Montparnasse,” the early-1900s bohemian paradise in Paris, Kiki lived on the more wild side. Addiction would speed along her end – she died in 1953, only 51 years old. Another reason, perhaps, that her legacy was not as lasting.
As much as Braude’s account is about Kiki, it is about the time in which she lived and the people among whom she lived. Because, “as she experienced her era and channeled that experience into her art, Kiki shared drinks and cigarettes and ideas with many of the people who would shape how their century saw and thought and spoke: Modigliani, Stein, Picasso, Barnes, Matisse, Guggenheim, Calder, Duchamp, Breton, Cocteau, Flanner, Hemingway,” writes Braude. “And Man Ray, whose emergence as a modern artist must be understood as intimately linked to her own.”
While Kiki may not have left much physical evidence behind of her influence, it doesn’t mean she wasn’t influential. Living as she did, with whom she did, Braude writes: “Evolving in concert with them, watching them become who they were, challenging them and joking with them, working with them and through them, Kiki, too, played her role in shaping the cultural history of the past hundred years.”
Braude’s book is not only a fascinating read, but a reminder that none of us is insignificant. Even if our names are lost to history, we matter, we impact others and the world around us.
In the first few years of 1900, my paternal grandparents – who had been married since 1886 – came to a decision. Economic life in Pinsk was too challenging and a drastic lifestyle change was required. So, in 1905, my grandfather, Yehiel Rubachka, age 34, journeyed alone from Pinsk (then under control of czarist Russia) to find work in Toronto. He knew Yiddish and a bit of Russian, having served in the Russian army for three years. He left behind my 27-year-old grandmother, Liba, and their four young children, Bessie (born in 1899), David (1902), Minnie (1903) and Herschel (1905), in Pinsk Karlin. Today, Karlin might be called a suburb of Pinsk.
On the one hand, Pinsk, with its sizeable and well-organized Jewish population (according to Yad Vashem, 21,819 or 77.3% of the city’s population, in 1896) offered the comfort of the familiar. On the other hand, living conditions were not good. By the time my grandfather left Pinsk, he and my grandmother had buried five children. There were also political and social issues, such as the fact that, in czarist Russia, Jews by and large lived under restrictions: forbidden to settle or acquire land outside the cities and towns, legally limited in attendance at secondary school and higher schools, virtually barred from legal professions, denied the right to vote for municipal councilors, and excluded from serving in the navy or the guards. Not to mention the repercussions of the failed 1905 Russian revolution, and the deaths and damage done by periodic Cossack attacks.
It is not clear what my grandfather’s relocation ultimately meant. For all intents and purposes, entering Canada was fairly easy; he did not need a passport or a visa to enter the country. But did he go to Toronto to test the waters so to speak – perhaps Canada would turn out to be no better than eastern Europe? Or was his plan, from the start, to make enough money to bring over the rest of the family? Or was it all left open-ended? On the birth certificate of one of my aunts, his occupation in Canada was listed as a (humble) rag collector.
In any case, around 1906, my grandparents decided a family portrait was needed. (Since my Uncle Herschel still looks like an infant, this photo was probably produced earlier than the 1910 date my father held to.) The problem, of course, was that the family was based in two distant locations, Toronto and Pinsk. So how was such a picture taken?
A family living on separate continents in the early 1900s has a photo with everyone in it. (photo from Deborah Rubin Fields)
According to Rita Margolin, a Yad Vashem historian, glass plate negatives were in use from the 1850s through the 1920s. They were popular with both amateur and professional photographers. In these years before courier and other delivery services, it would have been tricky to safely send glass negatives, they might have shattered in mailing. This suggests that some other method was used for putting together the two photos that became the family portrait.
Margolin further elaborated that a Pinsk photographer named Rendall might have made the composite image, as he was active in Pinsk in 1910. She pointed out, however, that photographers generally displayed their name on the photos they took, and my family’s photo is lacking a signature both on the front and the back side. (It is probably not a good idea with my unskilled hands to search for a signature by separating this very old photo from the cardboard to which it is pasted.) The lack of signature might mean that the photo I have is a copy and not the original.
Early 20th-century photo studios preferred photomontage – the production of images by physically cutting and joining combined photos – to create, for instance, tall-tale postcards. Tall-tale postcards are also known as “exaggerations.” Examples of these kinds of postcards include hilarious old farming photos in which farmers are seen pushing a wheelbarrow or a wagon containing giant harvested onions or enormous potatoes.
According to my father, the late Sidney (also known by his Yiddish name, Sheya) Rubin, z’l, my grandfather was added to the picture. One photographer with whom I consulted agreed that this is a likely scenario, as normally the head of the family would be prominently featured in the front, rather than the back, row of a photo.
In my family’s photograph, my grandmother is standing, facing the camera, straight on and straight-faced. My Aunt Bessie is sitting on a wooden chair while my Aunt Minnie is sitting on what might be a tree stump. My Uncle Dave is sitting on a suitcase. The baby, my Uncle Herschel, dressed in some sort of baby’s gown, sits atop a stack of cases. My grandfather, with a somewhat wistful look on his face, is cleverly placed behind a trunk, with only his upper torso visible.
My grandfather’s family left Pinsk and joined him in Canada in 1911. Sadly, all the relatives who remained in Pinsk were killed in the Shoah. My father’s family settled at Toronto’s 13 Leonard Ave. Between 1880 and 1928, 70,000 Jews left Russian-held territory for Canada.
Four more children were born in Toronto. These included two more aunts, one uncle and my father. Rachel or Rae was born in 1911, Birdie (often called by her Yiddish name Faigel) was born in 1913, Harvey (often called Mo) was born in 1915 and my father was born in 1917. My father’s family, however, did not remain in Toronto. In 1920, they moved to the United States, settling in Chicago. Along the way, the family name was changed to Rubin. My grandfather’s first name was anglicized to Joseph and my grandmother’s first name was anglicized to Elizabeth (or Lizzie). My grandfather became a naturalized American citizen in 1953. By that time, he had been living in the United States for more than 30 years but, still, he signed his naturalization papers in Yiddish.
As a child, I remember visiting the street where my father had lived as a young child. Perhaps surprisingly, the missionaries still had a close-by storefront. According to reports, missionaries had been “working” in the area since the time my grandfather was living in Toronto. Although they apparently succeeded in converting very few Jews, it did not stop them from trying for years on end.
Photoshop and other digital photo editing tools are a great help to today’s photographers. In the early 1900s, of course, computers and such programs did not exist. Yet, in the early 1900s, photographers on two continents managed to make a composite image nonetheless.
Deborah Rubin Fieldsis an Israel-based features writer. She is also the author of Take a Peek Inside: A Child’s Guide to Radiology Exams, published in English, Hebrew and Arabic.
Batia Holini’s photo of Israeli soldiers sleeping on the floor of a grocery store near Kfar Aza on Oct. 8 is one of the works in the exhibit Album Darom. (photo by Gil Zohar)
Album Darom: Israeli Photographers in Tribute to the People of the Western Negev, which opened recently for a six-month temporary installation at the Petach Tikva Museum of Art, is the first group artistic endeavour in Israel to confront the tragedy of Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre and the subsequent Gaza War, now in its 10th month. The ambitious tripartite installation Album Darom (Hebrew for Southern Album) incorporates a Facebook diary; a printed book of photographs accompanied by essays (published by Yedioth Ahronoth); and the museum exhibit.
Initiated by Prof. Dana Arieli, dean of the faculty of design at the Holon Institute of Technology, together with chief curator Irena Gordon, the project showcases 150 photographs, art installations and texts documenting the story of the western Negev region before and after Oct. 7. The exhibit includes the perspectives of 107 photographers and artists. Some of the participants in the album are world-renowned, others are amateurs. Lavi Lipshitz, the youngest featured photographer, lost his life fighting in Gaza. His mother penned the text accompanyinghis images.
The works in the album represent different photographic practices: artistic, personal and some staged, the intense images are upsetting. As well they should be in confronting mass murder.
Before walking around a corner to see Lali Fruhelig’s gruesome 3-D installation suggesting a corpse sprawled on the floor of a living room, a sign cautions: “The exhibition contains some potentially disturbing contents. Viewer discretion is advised.”
Arieli, a history professor and a photographer who explores remembrance culture and cultural manifestations of trauma, began the Album Darom project shortly after the Gaza war broke out.
“When something’s traumatic, you have to work or do something,” she said.
Shocked by the murder of her friend Gideon Pauker from Kibbutz Nir Oz – who was killed just before his 80th birthday – she posted 100 daily historic and contemporary images of the Western Negev.
Initially, Arieli intended Album Darom to be exhibited at Kibbutz Yad Mordechai Museum just north of the Gaza Strip frontier. After the museum was damaged by rocket fire, this wasn’t feasible. Instead, she selected Petach Tikvah as the venue. She explained that the site – the first Yad Labanim memorial to fallen Israel Defence Forces soldiers from the War of Independence – is meant to be relevant to all Israelis. The museum offers free admission on Saturday, so observant Jews may visit on Shabbat.
Speaking to a group of journalists, Arieli compared Oct. 7 to the Nov. 4, 1995, assassination of then-prime minister Yitzhak Rabin. “Everyone is frozen in their memory of where they were,” she said.
Arieli and Gordon emphasized the intended cathartic nature of the exhibit. The two said the museum is a “safe space” and a “place for healing.” After experiencing the horrors of Oct. 7, Gordon found solace in this project, she added. “This is part of how we are coping with it all,” she said.
Miki Kratsman is one of the photographers whose depiction of his Oct. 7 nightmare is in the exhibit. Terrorists took his aunt Ophelia hostage from her home in Kibbutz Nir Oz. She was later released from Gaza in the November hostage exchange deal.
Kratsman’s photograph, “In Aunt Ophelia’s Neighbourhood,” captures a modest kibbutz home collapsing as it is immolated in a fireball.
“These are the kinds of things that need to be in a museum,” Arieli said of the photograph. “You’re looking at the destruction of Nir Oz.”
While vividly showing the devastation of the kibbutz, the burning home photograph is an enigma, and creates dialogue, she added.
But it is the human toll rather than the destroyed real estate that is most painful. Paradoxically, perhaps, Batia Holini’s peaceful photo of exhausted IDF soldiers sleeping on the floor of a grocery store near Kfar Aza on Oct. 8 hints at the savage warfare in which they have been engaged.
“Funeral of Five Members of the Kutz Family who were Murdered in Kfar Aza,” a photo by Avishag Shaar-Yashuv. (photo by Gil Zohar)
Avishag Shaar-Yashuv’s photograph, “Funeral of Five Members of the Kutz Family who were Murdered in Kfar Aza,” captures the searing emotion of the funeral of a family annihilated in the Hamas attack.
“I tried to focus and also wipe the tears at the same time,” Shaar-Yashuv said.
For this reviewer, the most symbolic part of the exhibit was a taxidermy display of a doe entitled “Bambi.” The exhibit references Felix Salten’s 1923 novel Bambi: A Life in the Woods and the 1942 animated movie produced by Walt Disney. Metaphorically, the hapless baby deer represents both the Six Million victims of the Holocaust and the 1,200 people murdered on Oct. 7.
Viewing Album Darom, one could conclude that the myth of the state of Israel protecting its citizens has been shattered. Arguably, Israelis today are no more secure than their ancestors were facing the Kishinev Pogrom of 1903, the Hebron Massacre of 1929 or the Farhud in Baghdad in 1941.
Gil Zohar is a writer and tour guide in Jerusalem.
Left to right, Tzimmes’s Saul Berson, Yona Bar Sever and Moshe Denburg perform in the Ukrainian Hall Community Concert and Social on Nov. 5. (photo from Heart of the City)
A festival favourite, Tzimmes, will perform at the 20th Annual Downtown Eastside Heart of the City Festival, taking part in the Nov. 5 Ukrainian Hall Community Concert and Social, which closes out the 100-plus live and online events that take place at more than 40 venues over 12 days.
Presented by Vancouver Moving Theatre with the Carnegie Community Centre, the Association of United Ukrainian Canadians and other community partners, this milestone year of the festival – with the theme “Grounded in Community, Carrying it Forward” – starts Oct. 25.
“We have performed at DTES Heart of the City Festival on several occasions over the years,” Tzimmes founder and band leader Moshe Denburg told the Independent.
“November 2008 was the first time and, two years later, in October 2010, we performed again. We were invited a few years ago, in the fall of 2020, but couldn’t make it due to a scheduling conflict.”
In addition, said Denburg, a small group from the Vancouver Inter-Cultural Orchestra (VICO), which Denburg founded, played the festival in 2011. “The repertoire was, of course, intercultural, but included klezmer and Hebraic pieces as well,” he said. “Every time we played the festival, there was a truly welcoming atmosphere, and I would like to say it is an honour to be part of the mitzvah (good deed) that Heart of the City is performing for the neediest amongst us.”
“For 20 years, the Heart of the City Festival has been grounded in the Downtown Eastside and focused on listening and learning from the cultural practices of the community,” notes the press release. “The festival works with, for and about the Downtown Eastside community to carry forward our community’s stories, ancestral memory, cultural traditions, lived experiences and artistic processes to illuminate pathways of resistance and resilience.” The festival’s mandate “is to promote, present and facilitate the development of artists, art forms, cultural traditions, history, activism, people and great stories about Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside.”
The closing event at which a trio of musicians from Tzimmes will play – Denburg (lead vocal/guitar), Yona Bar Sever (lead guitar/backup vocal) and Saul Berson (clarinet/flute/saxophone) – will also feature the Barvinok Choir, Dovbush Dancers and the Vancouver Ukrainian Folk Orchestra. The concert will be opened by cultural speaker Bob Baker of the Squamish Nation and DTES resident, artist, poet and community activist Diane Wood will read “100 Years of Struggle” by the late Sandy Cameron, an historian and poet, among other things, who was very involved in the Downtown Eastside.
About what the Tzimmes trio will play at the concert, Denburg said, “The Tzimmes repertoire is always made up of Jewish music in the larger world context. So, there will be aspects of klezmer and Yiddish song (European), Ladino (Judeo-Spanish/Mediterranean), and pieces in a more Middle Eastern style as well. If anyone wants a primer on our repertoire, they can visit our YouTube page: @BigTzimmesProductions. Have a look/listen to ‘Dror Yikra,’ ‘Cuando’ and ‘Moishe’s Freylakh,’ and you’ll get an idea of what’s to come.”
The Independent last spoke with Denburg in 2021 about Tzimmes’s then-new two-CD album The Road Never Travelled. Since that interview, the group released, in 2022, a remixed and remastered version of their first album, calling it Sweeter and Hotter.
“In 2020, as we were creating our fourth album, The Road Never Travelled, I realized that there was almost enough material for a second disc, but it needed a few more pieces,” said Denburg. “Around that time, my dear friend and band mate, Yona, suggested that I try to remix our debut recording. We always felt that we were constrained by a simpler technology back in 1993, and that certain aspects of the mix could be improved – vocals could be clearer, instruments brought into better relation and so on. Looking around, I found a fine facility in Red Bank, N.J., that specialized in transferring old reel-to-reels to a digital format. The tapes of Sweet and Hot were 27 years old, but they transferred wonderfully to digital tracks.
“On the second disc of The Road Never Travelled, we included several remixed liturgical pieces from Sweet and Hot,” Denburg said, noting that the group continued the process and worked on every track of their 1993 debut album. He said, “The result, we believe, is an enhanced version of Sweet and Hot that does not compromise the original at all; in fact, we humbly submit, the result of all this work is that the sweet parts are even sweeter, and the hot stuff even hotter!”
The closing concert/social of the Heart of the City Festival – called Building Community: 20 Years of Friendship – takes place at the Ukrainian Cultural Centre, with doors opening at 2 p.m. and the concert at 3 p.m. Tickets ($30/$20) are available at eventbrite.ca.
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Among the many Heart of the City events is a month-long exhibit at Carnegie Community Centre of photographer David Cooper’s work for the festival over its 20 years. (photo from Heart of the City)
Among the many other events taking place during Heart of the City is an exhibit of photographer David Cooper’s work for the festival over its 20-year history, curated by Vancouver Moving Theatre co-founder Terry Hunter. (For more on Cooper, see jewishindependent.ca/capturing-community-spirit.)
Cooper will attend the Nov. 1, 4 p.m., opening reception in the third-floor gallery at Carnegie Community Centre. The exhibit, which runs to Nov. 30, will feature two to four photos from each of the festival’s 20 years, displayed chronologically with the festival poster for each year.
Organizers said Cooper provided guidelines for selecting the images: “simple, elegant, expressive images with energy, movement and/or emotion that represent the cultural and social diversity of the festival’s programming and people.” The exhibit also will include photos of festival participants who have passed away.
The fourth edition of the Western Canada Jewish Book Awards, presented by the Cherie Smith JCC Jewish Book Festival, culminated in a May 24 event at the Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver at which the winners in six categories – fiction, non-fiction, memoir/biography, children and youth, poetry, and Holocaust writing – were announced.
Winning the Nancy Richler Memorial Prize for fiction was Simon Choa-Johnston for House of Daughters, a stand-alone sequel to The House of Wives. Based on the author’s family, this multi-generational family saga opens when Emanuel Belilios, a wealthy Jewish opium oligarch, suddenly leaves Hong Kong, and his junior-wife, Pearl, blames Semah, the senior-wife. Pearl kicks Semah out of the mansion where the polyamorous trio had lived and shuns everyone, including her daughter. This is a story of passions and regrets, wealth and survival, set in Eurasian Hong Kong’s high society.
In the non-fiction category, the Pinsky Givon Family Prize went to Alan Twigg, editor of Gidal: The Unusual Friendship of Yosef Wosk and Tim Gidal, a selection of letters between Israeli Tim Gidal, a pioneer in photojournalism, and Vancouver scholar and art collector Yosef Wosk. In the late 1920s, with his handheld Leica, Gidal was able to travel in interwar Europe, capturing rare images of Polish Jews prior to the Holocaust. Wosk first encountered Gidal’s work in a magazine in 1991 – the photo “Night of the Kabbalist” captivated him. Wosk was determined to meet the photographer and eventually did. The two became close and the letters – selected by Twigg from hundreds the friends exchanged over two decades – both memorialize Gidal as an artist, scholar, historian of photography and “hero among the Jewish people,” and also capture the essence of Gidal and Wosk’s friendship.
The Cindy Roadburg Memorial Prize for memoir/biography was given to Marsha Lederman for Kiss the Red Stairs: The Holocaust, Once Removed. In it, Lederman delves into her parents’ Holocaust stories in the wake of her own divorce, investigating how trauma migrates through generations. At the age of 5, Lederman asked her mother why she didn’t have any grandparents, and her mother told her the truth: the Holocaust. Decades later, her parents having died and now a mother herself, Lederman began to wonder how much history had shaped her life and started her journey into the past, to tell her family’s stories of loss and resilience.
Boy from Buchenwald by Robbie Waisman (with Susan McClelland) took the Diamond Foundation Prize for children and youth writing. In 1945, Robbie Waisman, then Romek Wajsman, had just been liberated from Buchenwald, a concentration camp where more than 60,000 people were killed. He was starving, tortured and had no idea if his family was alive. Along with 472 other boys, these teens were dubbed “the Buchenwald Boys.” They were angry at the world for their abuse, and turned to violence: stealing, fighting and struggling for power. Few thought they would ever be able to lead functional lives again, but everything changed for Romek and the other boys when Albert Einstein and Rabbi Herschel Schacter brought them to a home for rehabilitation.
The Betty Averbach Foundation Prize for poetry went to Tom Wayman’s Watching a Man Break a Dog’s Back: Poems for a Dark Time, which explores the question of how to live in a natural landscape that offers beauty while being consumed by industry, and in an economy that offers material benefits while denying dignity, meaning and a voice to many in order to satisfy the outsized appetites of a few. A cri de coeur from a poet who has long celebrated the voices of working people, the collection also grapples with why “anyone, in this era so profoundly lacking in grace, might want to make poems – or any kind of art.”
Rounding out the awards was the Kahn Family Foundation Prize for Holocaust writing, which was given to But I Live: Three Stories of Child Survivors of the Holocaust by Charlotte Schallié (editor) and illustrators Miriam Libicki, Barbara Yelin and Gilad Seliktar. But I Live is a co-creation of the novelists and four Holocaust survivors: David Schaffer, brothers Nico and Rolf Kamp, and Emmie Arbel. Schaffer and his family survived in Romania due to their refusal to obey Nazi collaborators; in the Netherlands, the Kamps were hidden by the Dutch resistance in 13 different places; and, through the story of Arbel, who survived Ravensbrück and Bergen-Belsen concentration camps, we see the lifelong trauma inflicted by the Holocaust. The book includes historical essays, a postscript from the artists and words of the survivors.
Each category in the 2023 Western Canada Jewish Book Awards was assessed by five jurors, in different configurations, from the following professionals: Linda Bonder, a retired librarian; Susanna Egan, professor emeritus of literature in English from the University of British Columbia; Dave Margoshes, who writes fiction and poetry on a farm west of Saskatoon; Norman Ravvin, a writer, teacher and critic living in Montreal; Rhea Tregebov, an author of fiction, poetry and children’s picture books, and a retired professor in the UBC Creative Writing Program; Elisabeth Kushner, a librarian and writer living in Vancouver; Karen Corrin, former head librarian of the Isaac Waldman Jewish Public Library at the JCC; Nicole Nozick, former executive director of the Vancouver Writers Fest and former director of the JCC Jewish Book Festival; and Anita Brown, who is working with the Waldman Library.
Daniella Givon, chair of the awards committee, introduced the May 24 event, sharing a bit about the awards and thanking all the sponsors and participants for the high calibre and diversity of the submissions. The winning authors then said a few words, and Dana Camil Hewitt, director of the JCC Jewish Book Festival, closed the proceedings with more thank yous, and an invitation for everyone to purchase and enjoy the books.
Singing Creek Campground (photo by Ingrid Weisenbach)
This year’s Summer issue cover was taken at Singing Creek Campground in Garibaldi Park over the May long weekend. It was a relatively easy hike to the campsite, and gorgeous, as can be seen by the images below. All the photos were taken by Ingrid Weisenbach, wife of JI publisher and editor Cynthia Ramsay, who also got to enjoy this getaway.
Artist Anna Marszalkowska stands in front of “Levi,” which is part of her Tribes series, which is on exhibit at the Zack Gallery until May 4. (photo from Anna Marszalkowska)
The challenge of visually depicting the tribes of Israel has attracted many famous artists over the centuries. For example, on the 25th anniversary of the state of Israel, Salvador Dali, inspired by descriptions in the Torah, created a series of watercolours, “The Twelve Tribes of Israel.” Before that, in 1962, Marc Chagall made his famous stained-glass windows, “The Twelve Tribes,” for a synagogue in Jerusalem. Anna Marszalkowska, a local Vancouver artist of Polish origins, fits easily into this august company. Her solo show, The Tribes, opened at the Zack Gallery on March 29.
Marszalkowska grew up in Poland, but studied graphic design and worked as a graphic designer in London, England. “Diversity is what made my design path exciting,” she said in an interview with the Independent. “I started my career as a freelance web and graphic designer and then moved to video design and editing, as well as motion graphics and animation.”
Five years ago, she and her husband moved to Canada, but they lived and worked in the eastern part of the country. They relocated to Vancouver two years ago.
“We came here during the pandemic,” she said. “We wanted to try something different. For an outdoor person like myself, this is a great place. The nature is beautiful, and everyone is very friendly.”
She also changed the direction of her professional life. “I work with artists in the movie industry, but not as an artist myself,” she said. “I understand artists because of my past as a graphic designer, but I wanted less time at the computer screen. I wanted to free my creativity for more personal projects, which was hard to do while working as a graphic designer. Then, my creativity was fully engaged in my professional activity, but, on the other hand, I was limited by clients’ requirements. After a full day of work … I was often tired, I wanted to relax. Now, my creativity is freed. I have more time for my artistic experiments. I started abstract painting and I love it. Just me and a painting – it calms me.”
But even while working full time as a graphic designer, she still found energy to search for her individual style and themes. One of them was her Tribes series. “In 2010, I completed a print production course, and this series was the result.”
The series consists of 12 large digital prints, each one corresponding to one of the tribes of Israel. Although Marszalkowska’s version is an entirely modern take, it involves ancient symbolism, which originated in the Hebrew Bible. The artist conducted deep research for this project, and the end results are simultaneously stunningly simple and visually compelling.
“I had a blog before and, when I put the images online, many people expressed their interest. They wanted to buy one or several or all of the images.”
For the artist, this body of work has meaning beyond its commercial success. “It was a personal journey. I was searching for my Jewish ancestry. My grandmother grew up in a town in Poland where most citizens were Jewish before the war. She might have been part Jewish herself, but after the Holocaust, I had no one to ask.”
Instead, she studied the Bible and tried to interpret the narratives within a cultural context. “The symbols of the tribes are by no means fixed,” she explained. “Every artist could have their own interpretation, as the biblical texts describe the sons of Jacob allegorically.”
In her interpretation, the traditional symbols are given a contemporary, stylized appearance. “I explored the relationship between geometric shapes and lines,” she said. “I used repetition and symmetry to keep balance in each individual design and all 12 together.”
She also leaned towards a minimalistic approach, where a symbol of the tribe is centred on a one-colour background, with no other embellishments to attract a viewer’s attention. “In the original design, I had an ornamental frame around each image, but I got rid of them. I think less is more,” she said. “COVID made me realize that my focus should be the meaning, not the decorations.”
“Benjamin” by Anna Marszalkowska.
In most images, the background colour palette reflects that of the tribe, except for Benjamin, the youngest. “His symbol is a wolf,” Marszalkowska said. “He represents all colours of all tribes. To reflect that, I placed a ‘rainbow’ above the wolf. I think it is his spirit or maybe his song, Or his breath. It would depend on your own interpretation.”
In some of the designs, she incorporated photography for texture. “I used Adobe Illustrator to combine my photographs with my digital illustrations,” she said. For Simeon, her symbol is a tower, and she put her photos of bricks to good use in her pictorial tower construction. For Zebulun, whose symbol is a ship, she employed photos of water. “Issachar’s symbol is a donkey with a burden,” she said. “I used my photos of wood for the donkey’s load.”
When different sources offered different visual symbolisms for a tribe, the artist’s scholarly touch led her towards her own esthetic. For example, in the case of Levi, some documents don’t count him as a tribe and don’t offer any symbols for him. Historically, the Tribe of Levi wasn’t given any land, but its men served as religious leaders and teachers. Maszalkowska decided that Levi’s description as God’s Chosen Tribe warranted its own image: a breastplate of a high priest. The breastplate is embedded with 12 gemstones, each inscribed with the name of one of the tribes in Hebrew.
“Overall, the series is an invitation for everyone to embark on their own journey, to reflect on their own purpose and fulfilment,” said Maszalkowska. “Ultimately, I hope that my art will connect with the viewers and inspire them.”
Tribes runs until May 4.
Olga Livshin is a Vancouver freelance writer. She can be reached at [email protected].
Photographer Jason Langer’s perception of Germany and its capital, Berlin, is a complicated one, and his current exhibition at the Zack Gallery, Berlin: A Jewish Ode to the Metropolis, reflects those complexities. Organized in partnership with the Cherie Smith JCC Jewish Book Festival, the exhibit is Langer’s first show in Canada.
“Boys” (photo by Jason Langer)
Langer’s newly published book, Berlin, includes 135 black and white photographs. A selection of these images forms the exhibit at the Zack, which has an emotional sophistication of its own, even though the show is being promoted as a prologue for the book festival. Both the show and the book catalogue the artist’s several trips to Berlin and his explorations of the city. They also provide visually compelling commentary on Langer’s contradictory and evolving feelings for Germany.
A Nazi uniform in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp museum in Berlin. (photo by Jason Langer)
As in life, the then-and-now overlap and, occasionally, the juxtaposition of the past and the present are jarring in Langer’s imagery. On the one hand, Germany is the country where the Holocaust originated, the country that erased its Jewish population almost entirely and spearheaded the destruction of the Jews of Europe. On the other hand, it is a modern country of laughing kids, hardworking people and beautiful architecture, a country that acknowledges its past actions and tries to make amends to the Jews. It is a country inspiring fear, hatred, respect and admiration in varying measures.
Langer writes in an essay about his relationship with Germany and its progression from total negativity to growing understanding. When he was 6 years old, his family moved from his native United States to Israel, where he spent his formative years, until age 11, on a kibbutz.
“Every year, each children’s house would visit the Holocaust memorial, located on the kibbutz property, during Yom Kippur…. We were asked to walk silently and led into a courtyard with one building and three short walls,” writes Langer. “I remember the walls were made of large, rectangular stones, grey in colour and a bit rough and oddly shaped. We learned about how the Jews had suffered, first as slaves in Egypt and then in the Holocaust by the Germans.”
Later, as an adult, he “vaguely remembered having heard fearful stories of German people from my mother and grandmother, though my mother also made jokes about Germans, putting on a comic fake accent. She died in 2003 and I inherited her books, among other things, including a kind of illustrated encyclopedia titled The Wonderful Story of the Jews, written by Jacob Gewirtz. It was published [in 1970], not long before our move to Israel. The text refers to the Germans’ ‘unspeakable crimes’ against the Jews, as well as the ‘unending ravages of war, persecution and tyranny’ they had faced. Some of the illustrations are quite scary, showing buildings on fire and Jewish people menaced by gun-wielding Nazis. The book presents Israel as a place of refuge, the kibbutzim as almost unique.”
After being exposed to such ideas during childhood, Langer’s predominant feeling towards Germany was aversion. But then, in 2008, when he was already an established photographer, one of his friends suggested he photograph Berlin.
“He thought the city would be a good match for my sensibilities but I met his suggestion with trepidation and fear,” Langer recalled. “I harboured many preconceived ideas about Germans and Germany. I imagined Berlin as a vast, cold, unfriendly, gritty place, but, at the same time, it seemed exciting and sexy somehow.
“I decided to see Berlin for myself, keen to challenge my existing ideas and also uncover reminders of the Jewish people who had lived there, until they fled or were hunted down and killed by the Nazis.”
Photographer Jason Langer’s exhibit at the Zack Gallery runs to Feb. 16. (photo from Jason Langer)
In the next five years, Langer visited Berlin frequently. “From 2009 to 2013,” he said, “I made five trips for two weeks at a time. I stayed in a flat with about six people. When they were going on vacation, they would let me know, and I would fly over and occupy their rooms. They would also give me advice on where to go.”
During those visits, he took multiple photographs and strived to form a new narrative regarding his feelings and associations regarding Germany and its people.
“This work is an attempt to remember, confront and unwind my attitudes about Germans, Germany, Berlin and my Jewish inheritance; these images are part discovery, part remembrance and part fantasy,” he explained. “They’re my attempt to stand where Jewish people were rounded up and deported, to remember but also reassess. They’re an effort to confront my internal attitudes and prejudices, to look into people’s eyes and find a continuation of kindness, to be open to the happiness of contemporary life in Berlin.”
Some photographs in the gallery are full of anguish and terrible beauty, like the Holocaust Memorial, consisting of 2711 concrete slabs (stelae) of different heights, or an ornate door of the Stiftung Neue Synagogue, built in 1865, the only synagogue in Berlin to survive the war, though its interior was burnt.
The horror of the war is also reflected in the image of an old, dilapidated shed, the “goat house,” where one Jewish family, a mother and a daughter, hid for several years to survive the Nazis’ attempt to exterminate Jews. No water, no heat, no electricity, just the women’s indomitable spirits and relentless wish to live.
Every photo has a story to tell. Many a story of heroism and tragedy. But there are other pictures, too, reflecting modern Berlin, the city of now. Laughing boys, a tired-looking woman, an anti-fascist demonstration, various streets and buildings.
Langer writes: “It was a strange mix of death and life.… There was a sense of youth, freedom and joy I felt in Berlin.… Whenever I wandered, I took it as a gift of prolonged, uninterrupted time for reflection.”
The artist’s wanderings and reflections led to the creation of the photobook Berlin.
“This book is not a document,” said Langer. “It is a dream within a dream within another dream. Berlin is immense, there was no way I could cast a wide enough net to what it’s like. Instead, I have painted a picture of then and now, pain and pleasure, some people who died long ago and those who are living and young, all from my own perspective.”
Berlin: A Jewish Ode to the Metropolis opened on Jan. 6 and will continue at the Zack Gallery until Feb. 16. For more information, visit jasonlanger.com.
Olga Livshinis a Vancouver freelance writer. She can be reached at [email protected].
Letters that highlight friendship, writing that facilitates healing, stories that dissect societal mores – the books reviewed by the Jewish Independent this week represent only a small fraction of those featured at the Cherie Smith JCC Jewish Book Festival this year.
While the official festival runs Feb. 11-16, opening with Dr. Gabor Maté in conversation with Marsha Lederman about his latest book, The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness & Healing in a Toxic Culture, there are a couple of pre-festival events this month: German writer Max Czollek launches the English version of his book De-Integrate! A Jewish Survival Guide for the 21st Century on Jan. 19 and American-Israeli photographer Jason Langer presents his book Berlin: A Jewish Ode to the Metropolis on Jan. 26. As well, there is a post-festival event, on Feb. 28, which sees former federal cabinet minister and senator Jack Austin launching his memoir, Unlikely Insider: A West Coast Advocate in Ottawa.
If the books reviewed by the Independent are any indication, attendees of the festival can expect to have their views challenged and their perspectives broadened; they will be moved, disturbed and amused, sometimes all at once.
Intimate portraits
Two years ago, the JCC Jewish Book Festival featured the book Memories of Jewish Poland: The 1932 Photographs of Nachum Tim Gidal (jewishindependent.ca/gidals-photos-speak-volumes). It was the fulfilment of a dying request that Israeli photographer Tim Gidal made in 1996 to Vancouver scholar, writer and philanthropist Yosef Wosk. The book was released at the same time that an exhibit of its photos was mounted at the Zack Gallery (jewishindependent.ca/jewish-poland-in-1932).
The friendship between Wosk and Gidal was evident in that book and in the exhibit. How the two men – separated in age by some 40 years and in geography by almost 11,000 kilometres – became such good friends is the subject of Gidal: The Unusual Friendship of Yosef Wosk and Tim Gidal, written by Wosk (and, technically, Gidal) and edited by another of Wosk’s good friends, Alan Twigg.
Alan Twigg (PR photo)
The bulk of Gidal is letters that Gidal and Wosk wrote to each other from 1993, soon after they met, through to Gidal’s death in 1996. The postscript is a letter from Wosk to Gidal’s wife, Pia, mourning Gidal’s death and hoping that “his work and vision continue to inspire others.” Twigg has masterfully edited the multi-year correspondence, which comprised hundreds of letters, into an engaging narrative that offers insight into the core of these undeniably brilliant men, their work, ideas, loves, frustrations, sadnesses and more. Their vulnerability makes this a brave publication for Wosk to have created, and a meaningful one.
The other main component of Gidal is, of course, Gidal’s photographs, which, Wosk writes in the afterword, “serve as background to the letters.” As he did with Memories of Jewish Poland, Wosk mostly lets the photographs speak for themselves. Each photo section has a theme but each image within the section is simply captioned, placed and dated, without commentary.
There is a short chapter on Gidal and one on his and Wosk’s friendship and how this book came about. Gidal is creatively and esthetically put together. Each letter is headed by a key quote from the missive and the date it was sent. Images are included of some of the actual letters, most of which were sent by fax. It is interesting to contemplate whether this fount of communication would exist if it had been made via email.
Wosk and Twigg will talk about Gidal on Feb. 14, 7 p.m., at the book festival. The event is free of charge.
Therapeutic memoirs
Paired together for a presentation are Margot Fedoruk and Tamar Glouberman. The program categorizes them as “modern-day women” who will be presenting their “offbeat memoirs,” summarized by the question, “How B.C. is that?” Indeed, both Fedoruk and Glouberman tell coming-of-age stories of a sort, Fedoruk’s beginning in her 20s and Glouberman’s in her 30s. And they both lead outdoorsy, independent lives that could be described as the B.C. ideal, yet both have also faced many challenges and darker sides of that ideal.
Fedoruk is the author of Cooking Tips for Desperate Fishwives, in which she openly shares her anxieties of being married to a West Coast sea urchin diver – she is lonely without him, must raise their two daughters mostly without him and is worried that an accident may result in her having to live without him. Yet, she loves Rick, even though she does try (unsuccessfully) to convince him to take up another profession and stay closer to home. The pair moves around a lot, and Fedoruk herself takes up many different jobs over the years to make ends meet. But they stick together, getting married after their daughters are all grown up and have left home.
As dysfunctional as their relationship appears at times, Fedoruk had a more challenging life before she met Rick. Her father is a horrible man, her mother dies of cancer and she and her sister lose the family home to her mother’s second husband, also a horrible man. And there’s more. It is no wonder she leaves Winnipeg, eventually settling in British Columbia, though settling may be too strong a word, as she and her family do live in several different places on the coast, with some time in Calgary.
What makes Fedoruk’s memoir unique is the inclusion of a recipe in almost every chapter that reflects the mood or subject matter of the chapter, like the Killer Lasagne in the introduction, which begins, “The night I ran over Rick with my car, I was over four months pregnant with our first daughter.” Other recipes include Easy Curried Chickpeas With Rice, which appears as an affordable comfort food in a chapter about her being exhausted, on her own, caring for her two then-young daughters; and Wild-crafted Stinging Nettle Pesto, which comes after one of her descriptions of the soaps she makes – her business is Starfish Soap Company.
Near the end of her memoir, Fedoruk mentions that she has started therapy. I would have liked her to have written this book further into that process. As honest as she is about her feelings and circumstances, the memoir would have been more layered and impactful had she been further along in understanding how her traumatic childhood experiences, her genes and other factors affect how she moves through the world.
Glouberman has a less tragic background but a similarly transient life – and also loves something that gives her both great joy and great anxiety, the latter of which eventually takes over. In Chasing Rivers: A Whitewater Life, she shares her emotional journey of trying to make a life as a whitewater rafting guide.
One of the few women to guide tours, Glouberman does face sexism, her skills often underestimated by clients, but her male bosses and colleagues all seem to appreciate her abilities – certainly more than she does. She is constantly worried about making a mistake that will kill her or someone else and, while this is rational, given her job and its risks, the feeling becomes overwhelming. With an accident on the road – there is a lot of travel required to get to places like Chilko River, Williams Lake and further afield, outside the province – and her worst nightmare coming true on a rafting trip, Glouberman’s fears have very real incidents on which to grow.
Glouberman tries other types of work, but is always drawn back to the water. She struggles with depression and has a few other harsh experiences that add to her self-doubt. She tries various forms of therapy, some of which make her feel worse. Her family is supportive, though, and her sister’s home in Whistler is a refuge. She is only beginning her journey to healing when the memoir ends, and part of that has to do with getting into a master’s writing program. Both she and Fedoruk, who also went back to university for a writing degree, thank several people for their memoirs coming to fruition.
Glouberman and Fedoruk present at the book festival Feb. 12, 2 p.m. (tickets are $18). They also speak at Congregation Har El that day, at 11 a.m.
The price of victory
The harm inflicted on a society by war culture is front and centre in Israeli writer Yishai Sarid’s book Victorious. The main character, Abigail, is a military psychologist who, basically, tries to make soldiers into better killers, both “helping” them through trauma after they’ve experienced it and teaching them ways to be immune to trauma so that they can “beat the enemy.” Her father, who strongly disapproves of her work with the army, is a renowned clinical psychologist. On more than one occasion, he tries to talk her out of working for the military, but does not succeed. That the character of the father is dying of cancer is not coincidental.
Abigail blurs professional lines everywhere, working for the married man who fathered her son, the man who is now the army’s chief of staff; sleeping with a patient/friend; trying to become close friends with a former patient; and having a sexual relationship with one of the young soldiers whose unit she’s evaluating. The lessons she teaches are chilling, as is her abandonment of a patient who becomes too difficult for her to handle and some of her other actions.
She believes her job is her patriotic duty, even as her own son, Shauli, enters military service, in the paratroopers no less, and her fears for him fight with her pride in his choice. Though, with both his father and mother being staunch militarists, it could be argued that Shauli doesn’t really have a choice.
Victorious is a sparingly written novel that readers will not only ponder but feel well after they put it down. Translator Yardenne Greenspan must be given credit for making Sarid’s words as impactful in English as they are in Hebrew.
Sarid’s book festival event is Feb. 12, at 8 p.m. Tickets are $18.
For the full author lineup and to purchase festival tickets or passes, visit jccgv.com/jewish-book-festival or call 604-257-5111.
David Cooper is renowned for the skill with which he captures energy and light in photographs and film. But the multiple-award-winning artist was not appointed a Member of the Order of Canada in 2020 only for his “innovative contributions to Canadian performance photography,” but also “for his dedicated mentorship of emerging artists.” One of the many ways in which he has shown that dedication is his support of the Downtown Eastside (DTES) community in which he is based.
Cooper has taken countless photographs for the DTES Heart of the City Festival since the annual festival began 19 years ago, and for Vancouver Moving Theatre – the festival’s main presenter, along with Carnegie Community Centre and the Association of United Ukrainian Canadians – for at least three decades. The festival photo sessions at his studio have been community-building gatherings and the festival provides copies of their photos to the culturally and socially diverse artists who live, perform and create in the neighbourhood. This year’s Heart of the City takes place Oct. 26-Nov. 6, with more than 100 events throughout the DTES and online.
Larissa Healey, from the Heart of the City Festival, in a photo taken by David Cooper.
It was Vancouver Moving Theatre co-founder Terry Hunter who introduced Cooper to the Heart of the City Festival, since it involved artists, writers, singers and storytellers and Cooper’s career has always been in the arts. Though that wasn’t always where his interest lay.
“I started training at U of T [University of Toronto] for architecture,” Cooper told the Independent. “It was a five-year undergraduate program and I came out west after my second year, as a break. I’ve always had a camera but never had formal photography training beyond a summer course at Banff when I was a teenager. Through a friend, I checked out a local theatre company to see if they needed any photos taken. Eventually, I was given a chance to shoot a play at the Vancouver Playhouse Theatre, directed by Christopher Newton. They were really excited about the results from a dress rehearsal and offered me a job. I spent four years there in the publicity department, also creating posters and marketing material.”
Cooper is from Forest Hill in Toronto. He grew up in a conservative Jewish neighbourhood. “I went to Hebrew school but I stopped practising Judaism when I moved out west from my family,” he said. “I still go back for special occasions and joined the JCC here in Vancouver.”
As a theatre, dance and music photographer for more than 40 years, Cooper’s photos and videos have publicized more than 60 companies throughout Canada and the United States. The Shaw Festival, Bard on the Beach, Arts Club Theatre, the Royal Winnipeg Ballet, 605 Collective, Karen Flamenco Company, Vancouver Opera, Vancouver Symphony, Electra Women’s Choir, Chor Leoni Men’s Choir, Spirit of the West and Uzume Taiko Drummers are just a dozen-plus of the groups with which he has worked. He has been a stills photographer for several TV series and his dance videos have been shown internationally. In addition, he teaches and mentors students, holds workshops for both amateur and professional photographers, and photographs for theatre and dance schools.
Among the many recognitions Cooper has garnered, he received a Jessie Richardson Theatre Award in 1995 for his outstanding contribution to the Vancouver arts community and was elected a pioneer member of the B.C. Entertainment Hall of Fame in 2006.
“I’ve mostly been a theatre photographer, shooting live shows,” said Cooper. “I spent 15 years shooting film and transitioned to digital in 2001. It was a Canada Council grant in 1978 that took me to the Royal Winnipeg Ballet to learn more about ballet and I spent two weeks in class and rehearsals documenting the process.”
Firefly Books in Ontario recently published the coffee table book David Cooper Body of Work: Theatre and Dance Photography. Each of the 500 copies published includes a limited-edition print signed by Cooper.
Only 500 copies of David Cooper Body of Work have been printed.
“I have worked with a great graphic designer and art director, Scott McKowen, for 30 years, photographing marketing materials for the Stratford Festival, the Shaw Festival, Yale Repertory Theatre, Canadian Stage, Theatre Calgary and others together,” said Cooper of how the publication came to be. “He suggested we compile all our work into a book and include my dance work that is separate from the theatre.”
According to Firefly’s website, the book includes essays on Cooper’s theatre photography (by Newton, artistic director emeritus of the Shaw Festival), on his dance images (by Vancouver writer and arts commentator Max Wyman) and on his marketing images (by McKowen). Ballet dancer Evelyn Hart “has contributed an appreciation, and Cooper himself discusses the most intimate relationship between photographer and subject – portraiture.”
When asked what the most gratifying parts of his career are, Cooper told the Independent: “Working with talented performers. Getting to travel all across Canada and the U.S. shooting for different arts organizations.”
Most readers will not have heard of Kiki de Montparnasse, born Alice Prin in 1901, in Châtillon-sur-Seine, about 240 kilometres southeast of Paris, to an unwed mother who wasn’t much into mothering. But most would likely recognize her – she modeled for many an artist (Alexander Calder, Tsuguharu Foujita, Amedeo Modigliani, to name a few, as well as Maurice Mendjizky, with whom she fell in love for awhile). And, during her seven-year relationship with surrealist photographer Man Ray (who thought himself more of a painter), she posed for him many a time. In 2022, one of Ray’s most famous images of her, called “Le Violon d’Ingres,” sold for $12.4 million, the most expensive photograph ever sold at auction.
