Diaspora: Homelands in Exile (2 Volume Set) [Hardcover]

Frederic Brenner (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0060087781 | ISBN-13: 978-0060087784 | Publication Date: September 30, 2003 | Edition: First Edition

Since 1978, French photographer FrÉdÉric Brenner has been chronicling the Jewish Diaspora by producing visual social histories of Jewish communities. Diaspora is a photographic record of his 25-year search for the Jewish population in 40 countries over five continents. Volume I, 344 pages, is a collection of 262 of Brenner's more than 80,000 photographs, the most extensive and diverse visual record of Jewish life ever created. A four page color insert includes two full-color photographs. Volume II is 164 pages of evocative essays by leading intellectuals on the meaning and significance to each of them of 60 of Brenner's photographs, reproduced here in smaller format. Diaspora is a landmark project that captures the scope and dynamism of one of the world's oldest, most diverse communities, and challenges stereotypes held by Jews and non-Jews alike.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

If a group of eastern European Jews re-create their shtetl when they settle in Israel, then which place is home and which is exile? And while a secular Soviet general calls himself a Jew, and so does a man whose ancestors came to India almost 2,000 years ago, what, if anything, do they have in common? These are the kinds of questions provoked by Brenner's stunning collection of photographs, taken over the course of 25 years, chronicling Jewish lives, often in declining communities, in every corner of the world, from Azerbaijan and Uzbekistan to Ethiopia and Las Vegas. For anyone, Jewish or otherwise, who generally thinks of Jews in terms of Israel and the United States, the book will be a revelation. The images are full of surprises and ironies: contemporary Marranos in Portugal continue to celebrate Passover secretly, as they did during the Inquisition; a young Yemeni immigrant to Israel wears traditional sidelocks like his counterparts from eastern Europe; the men who sell Christian souvenirs in the piazza at St. Peter's in Rome are all Jewish. Brenner's images of women are particularly striking: six American breast cancer survivors are photographed shirtless; mothers of the desaparecidos in Argentina (of whom a disproportionate number were Jews) exhibit anguish and dignity; and a beautifully constructed photo presents a circular grouping of Holocaust survivors paired with their lesbian daughters. Brenner, who is French and has an advanced degree in anthropology, is well equipped to ponder (as he does in brief texts accompanying the photos in Vol. 2) the enigma of identity, its shifting nature in tension with a thread of continuity through time and space. Also accompanying his text are commentaries and personal reflections from writers and thinkers as diverse as Andre Aciman, Jacques Derrida and Julius Lester. Responding to a group portrait of men in a teahouse in Azerbaijan, Aciman sums up a paradox of the diaspora: "Why do they blend in so easily? Isn't it improbable how Jewish all Jews look." Of a group of Jewish barbers with their Muslim customers in Tajikistan, Brenner writes, "I wanted to show how these dhimmi Jews in Muslim lands successively embraced the Russian conquest and the Bolshevik revolution--which they believed would bring them emancipation but which instead confined them to professions such as shoe-mender and barber." This extraordinary volume is well worth it for the richness and variety of images, which will delight and sometimes perplex readers.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From The New Yorker

Since the late nineteen-seventies, Brenner has travelled the world photographing Jewish families and communities: Hasidim in Jerusalem, seeking to re-create the village life of their forebears in Eastern Europe; Marranos in Portugal, observing their rituals in secret, as they have since the Inquisition; the women rabbis and cantors of New York's Jewish Theological Seminary; and, in a more secular vein, Tajikistani barbers, Hollywood moguls, and Calcutta merchants. This handsome two-volume set presents Brenner's images along with commentary from such writers as Jacques Derrida, Julius Lester, Stanley Cavell, and Carlos Fuentes. Often the pictures provoke contradictory responses, as when a group of Roman Jews are shown standing proudly amid the ruins of a classical amphitheatre. Brenner's work—elegiac, celebratory, irreverent—transcends portraiture, representing instead a prolonged, open-ended inquiry into the nature of identity and heritage.
Copyright © 2005 The New Yorker

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 508 pages
• Publisher: Harper; First Edition edition (September 30, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060087781
• ISBN-13: 978-0060087784
• Product Dimensions: 12 x 12.5 x 2.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.9 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #742,396 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

23 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Magnificent Photographs Of A People United In Exile, November 24, 2003

By 

Jana L. Perskie "ceruleana" (New York, NY USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Diaspora: Homelands in Exile (2 Volume Set) (Hardcover)

French photographer Frederic Brenner has brilliantly documented Jewish life in the Diaspora with his magnificent photographs. He has spent the last twenty-five years traveling through over forty countries, on five continents, creating and compiling this collection of images of Jewish communities, faces and culture. Brenner has woven a thread, through the visual image, that shows a people united in their heritage.

This beautiful two volume set is presented in a heavy laminated slipcase. Volume I, PHOTOGRAPHS, contains 262 of Brenner's black and white photos, 2 two-page color photographs, and one map. There are images of a Jewish Harley-Davidson motorcycle club with members posed in front of a Miami Beach synagogue; Jewish workers and their children from Birobidzhan, the former Soviet Union's Jewish autonomous region; portraits of modern Jewish writers living in Austria and Germany; women who have lost their children to the secret police in Argentina; Marranos in Portugal who continue the tradition of celebrating the Passover secretly; Jewish men selling Christian souvenirs in Rome's St. Peter's Piazza; a spiritual gathering of Navahos and Jews in Arizona; Jewish barbers from Tajikistan and merchants from Calcutta. The only color photographs in the book show a yellow swatch of cloth printed with the Star of David that Jews were forced to wear under the Nazis. There is an entire room covered in the same cloth - a photograph commissioned for the Vienna State Opera that hung there as a stage curtain.

Volume II, VOICES, contains writings - essays and commentary from such modern intellectuals and authors as Carlos Fuentes, Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg, Georges Steiner, André Aciman, Jacques Derrida and the voices of the people photographed.

Frederic Brenner wrote, "The Jews I have photographed are all contemporary, but together they reflect a full spectrum of space and time . . . Diaspora: An experience of dispossession and discontinuity. . . . The photographs enable us to see and acknowledge the multiple threads from which we are woven, to listen to and acknowledge the multiple voices within us, even when paradoxical and discordant."

These massive albums represent a tremendous achievement. Brenner has given a gift to us all. These books deserve a place of honor in the home.
JANA

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Gift To Us All!, October 18, 2003

By 

fCh "fCh" (GMT-5, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Diaspora: Homelands in Exile (2 Volume Set) (Hardcover)

This is a book remarkable for its depicting the so many facets of UNITY. Its stated and documented variety in unity is achieved by capturing the unity in variety of all self-described Jews. Yet, such generous conclusion soon becomes the premise of an inference, one cannot abstain from, about the unity of all humankind.

Great photos that span over several decades, continents, countries, and one people along a vast continuum. The subjects do a certain amount of posing as if in preparation for the moment the reader meets them all. And the reader has the option to meet them in any sequence OR summon all these geo-temporal instances in one place, at one time.

Great photos, consistent quality and presentation technique, good commentary in the second volume. Excellent gift to us all!

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars magnificent, October 13, 2003

By 

A.G. (New York) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Diaspora: Homelands in Exile (2 Volume Set) (Hardcover)

I rarely enjoy a "coffee table book" but this is so much more. It is absolutely brilliant-- the many essays are brief but thoughtful and a wonderful companion for the photos which span the evolution of a 25 year career-- or rather-- vocation. Highly recommended.