Jewish Ghetto Photographers: Reimagining the Holocaust
Alan Ostrow Memorial Lecture Series
A lecture by Judith Cohen, Chief Acquisitions Curator, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, DC

Tuesday, February 5th, 6 PM

Portland Art Museum
Whitsell Auditorium
1219 SW Park Avenue, Portland, OR 97205
www.portlandartmuseum.org
503 226 2811

This lecture is FREE but reservations are recommended.
To reserve, visit: portlandartmuseum.org

The vast majority and best known Holocaust photography was taken by German photographers. These photos include such iconic images as the Warsaw ghetto boy and the selections at Auschwitz. Therefore, we largely visualize the Holocaust through Nazi eyes. However, there also exists a considerable corpus of Jewish ghetto photography taken both by professional and amateur photographers. These photographs not only capture aspects of the ghetto hidden to the Germans, but also show layers of ambiguity and nuance that the official photos miss. How do these photographs differ from the better known Nazi photographs? Does it matter who took the photo or just what appears in the image?

Organized in conjunction with the exhibitions Memory Unearthed: The Lodz Ghetto Photographs of Henryk Ross (Portland Art Museum) and The Last Journey of the Jews of Lodz (Oregon Jewish Museum and Center for Holocaust Education) both on view through February 24, 2019.

About the Alan Ostrow Memorial Lecture Series: Established in 1983 to honor the memory of Alan Ostrow, today this Portland Art Museum endowed biennial lecture series aims to highlight artists and other creative thinkers working in or exploring photography based practices.