Exhibit reveals history through personal portraits: “Survivors: Faces of Life after the Holocaust” review
The monograph of photographs by Martin Schoeller, Survivors: Faces of Life after the Holocaust
On Sunday, September 18, 2022, I attended the opening of an exhibit at The Museum of Jewish Heritage in downtown Manhattan, “Survivors: Faces of Life After the Holocaust.” On view through June 28, 2023, you have ample time to visit—and I suggest that you do.
The exhibition, which showcases 75 large-scale portraits taken by renowned photographer Martin Schoeller, originated at Israel’s Yad Vashem to mark the 75th anniversary of the Liberation of Auschwitz in 2020.
Schoeller photographed these Holocaust survivors and created a short film documenting the process. The New York exhibition includes the entire body of work including the film, brief biographies, and quotes from the sitters.
In an Instagram post that coincided with the original release of the portrait series, Schoeller wrote, “The Survivors in this series, having endured the most appalling campaign of hatred in modern times, stand in for all of the wronged and aggrieved people of the world. And, in their spirit of generosity and warmth, they offer an inspiring testament to the best of what we can be.”
Click through to that post and those that immediately follow it to see many of the portraits included in both the exhibit and the monograph available for purchase.
The poetry of photographic storytelling
Henry Greenspan, whose book On Listening to Holocaust Survivors: Recounting and Life History, approaches the idea of inviting and listening to a survivor’s testimony as an ongoing conversation. He “shows us the ways survivors do ‘make stories’ for the ‘not-story’ they remember. Just as important, he shows us the ways they are not able to do so,” reads the book jacket.
Why quote this book here? Because no testimony is a complete story. No recounting of an individual’s Holocaust experience can be considered representative of history. And what survivors cannot say—what they deem will be ‘unhearable’ by listeners, what they cannot find words to describe—tells as much of their story as the words they have chosen to convey.
A former client of mine—a man who survived Camp Les Mille in France, and whose oral history now resides in the museum housed there—told me of his experiences at length. After an extended silence, he said, “A poem would be best. Things left unsaid that are unsayable. Allusions. Maybe that is what’s needed. But I am not a poet, so there are some things I cannot tell you.”
All this, I suppose, is prelude to my observation that Martin Schoeller’s photographs in this exhibition are poetry: individual portraits as stanzas, lines, that say a great deal—but taken together, all together, they form a visual poem that can only allude to the magnitude of the tragedy, the miracle of resilience, and the humanity and power of bearing witness.
And that is why I implore you to visit—for the juxtaposition of these 75 images in the rotunda, so tightly displayed and so imposing in stature, so gloriously alive and so undeniably affecting…and for the individuals whose faces, and whose stories, are represented therein.
Learn more about “Survivors: Faces of Life After the Holocaust”
Find details about visiting the exhibition, “Survivors: Faces of Life After the Holocaust” at The Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York City.
Scroll down to posts dated August 24, 2020, on Martin Schoeller’s Instagram feed to encounter some of the personal portraits taken for this project.
Purchase Martin Schoeller’s monograph (a stunning book I bought at the museum): “Presented close-up and larger-than-life, every feature of Martin Schoeller’s subjects provides us with a piece of personal and collective history: their faces observe us, their gazes hold us. The lines they bear evidence horrors endured, as well as the triumph of their survival and building their lives anew.”
Browse some of the photographer’s other work, including his signature close-ups of celebrities and other cultural icons and provocative series of homeless individuals and death row exonerees.
Watch a recording of the opening-day Q&A between photographer Martin Schoeller and Sara Softness, the curator of special projects at The Museum of Jewish Heritage; this recording also includes a clip from the moving behind-the-scenes video that accompanies the in-person exhibition.
What better way to scope out if a personal historian is a good fit for you than to hear about others’ experiences, in their own words? I am humbled and proud.