August 2015 – Page 2

The Jewish Ghetto and Photonostalgia: Roman Vishniac’s Vanished World

On the 19^th of August 1897, one of the world’s most remarkable microbiologists and naturalist photographers, Roman Vishniac was born in Pavlovsk, the Russian Empire. Within the art world, however, he is best remembered for his photojournalistic coverage of the Eastern European Jewish ghettos prior to World War II. In the late 1930s, Vishniac was commissioned by the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) to photograph the Jewish poor of Eastern Europe. Out of the sixteen thousand photographs he managed to take, only two thousand survived. Most of them have been published several times in book form as Polish Jews (1947), A Vanished World (1969), and To Give Them Light(1992).

Vishniac’s body of work has come to be thought of as the last photographic record of a universe on the cusp of being comprehensively and cataclysmically destroyed. His pictures were used in so many influential books about…

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California Institute of the Arts Faculty Position in Contemporary Art Theory

Race and Ethnic Studies Funding Opportunities

Deadline: October 1

Length: Unstated

Comments: “The School of Critical Studies at the California Institute of the Arts. . . invite[s] applications for a full-time faculty position in contemporary art theory, with an emphasis on political thought. Approaches that foreground race and gender are particularly welcome.”

URL: https://calarts.edu/employment/contemporary-art-theory-faculty-position-ma-aesthetics-and-politics-programbfa-critical-s

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Director Jose Antonio Vargas’ documentary “White People” confronts White privilege in America

Worn: Shaping Black Feminine Identity

Karin Jones

In September 2014, I received a commission to create an installation at the Royal Ontario Museum on the theme of African identity and Canadian history. I have just completed this work, and it will open January 31! The work consists of a Victorian mourning dress made of braided synthetic hair extensions, surrounded by a bed of natural cotton bolls, some of which are altered to contain tufts of my own hair. The installation will stand alone in the Wilson Canadian Heritage Gallery, within the Sigmund Samuels Gallery of Canada. The exhibition will run until November 2015.

Read my artist statement here.

Here is a video discussion by some of the curators and advisors talking about my work (skip to the 18 minute mark) and about the Of Africa initiative, a 3-year program of exhibitions and events about Africa and the African Diaspora.