Born in New York, photographer Vivian Cherry began working in the 1940s, and in 1947 she joined the social realist Photo League. She studied with Sid Grossman, one of its founders. After an extended break from photography, from 1957 to 1987, Cherry took up her camera again. She exhibited extensively and her works are part of the permanent collections in numerous museums, including the National Portrait Gallery in London and the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.
This photograph of two Jews reduces them to an abstraction, a single black shape, in a composition that includes the round shapes of manhole covers, the curving black lines of a street grating, and…
God, blessed be He, knew very well that the people of Israel would be scattered among the nations and that most of them would not be able to understand the holy tongue [Hebrew]. Therefore our sages…
My name is Benillouche, Alexandre Mordekhai.
How galling the smiles of my classmates! In our alley, and at the Alliance School, I hadn’t known how ridiculous, how revealing, my name could be…