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Photography

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West Coast Highway

I Came to Explore the Wreck

Rachel Landau

Boxes of slide reels still cover my repurposed kitchen table. To help with storage, a nearby closet offers enough space for a whopping twelve boxes for a total of sixteen, all compiled by my paternal Grandfather. I’m no mathematician but I can easily calculate that, with sixteen boxes of eighty slides, there must be over twelve hundred squares of film.

Sally Fox

Driven to document the real lives of women often ignored by male writers and historians, Sally Fox used photographs, paintings, and political cartoons to reveal the history of women at work and at play.

Rebecca Lepkoff, 1916 - 2014

When she was hired to dance at the 1939 World’s Fair, she used her earnings to buy a camera on a whim. The camera became her new passion. Her artistic vision transformed from choreography of the body to the choreography of the streets around her.

Deb Perelman

Resisting trends towards fussy recipes with complicated instructions and esoteric ingredients, Deb Perelman focused her Smitten Kitchen food blog on “foolproof” recipes that incorporated feedback from online commenters.

Exiled German photographer Jeanne Mandello arrives in Uruguay

July 15, 1941

Though her equipment and work was destroyed in wartime Europe, photographer Jeanne Mandello created a new life for herself in South America.

Deena Metzger

Deena Metzger’s iconic portrait, “The Warrior,” changed the way we look at surviving breast cancer.

Diana Mara Henry

Diana Mara Henry photographed some of the most important events in the women’s movement, including the iconic image of the march to the First National Women’s Conference in Houston.

Gay Block

Gay Block’s photography allowed her to explore surprising facets of her subjects, from girls at summer camp to Holocaust survivors to her own mother.

Linda Eastman marries Paul McCartney.

March 12, 1969

Photographer and animal rights activist Linda Eastman marries Paul McCartney.

Sculptor and performance artist Hannah Wilke is born

March 7, 1940

"My heart is hard to handle, my art is too.” Sculptor Hannah Wilke

Death of Artist and Photograph Editor Sally Fox

February 26, 2006

Sally Fox - "I am driven to try to document what women are really doing, so they won't be taken for granted."

Joan Roth

Standing on top of the world, with a true and equitable representation of its women, seemed a harmonious interchange between dreams and actions, work and belief.

Diana Mara Henry

I was rushing backward as fast as I could in order to get the shot of these proud and happy women energetically marching to the Houston convention center...

Gay Block

I know now that she lost herself as soon as she married, taking on the persona of the wife she imagined she must be.

Annie Leibovitz

The Jewess Behind the Camera

Talia bat Pessi

Photographers like Arbus, Goldin, and Leibovitz have brought their own unique worldviews–perspectives that were certainly informed by their religious background and gender identities–to their works. Their groundbreaking art has paved the way for contemporary young Jewish women aspiring to capture the moment through the camera. Their legacy will always stay in the hearts and minds of people around the globe, their photos stirring the hearts of simple people and arts aficionados alike.

Topics: Photography
"Growing Up Female: A Personal Photo-Journal" by Abigail Heyman

Abigail Heyman: A Feminist & Photographer

Jordyn Rozensky

Being a photographer is hard enough, and breaking down barriers of a male driven profession and world is even harder. Abigail Heyman was one photographer who did just that. Abby Heyman was a photographer with something to say, one who created work of consequence through brutally honest and personal photographs.  She wove her own identity—that of a woman growing up in a culture not always meant for women—into her photographs.

A Young Child at the Boston Pride Parade, 2013

The Faces of Boston Pride

Jordyn Rozensky

They say there’s nothing like a parade—and they’re right. This weekend I marched in my first ever Pride parade, proudly carrying my JWA bag, a Keshet sign reading “another Jew for LGBTQ equality,” and my camera. The weather called for rain, but I wasn’t about to let that get me down. I packed my raincoat and channeled my inner Barbra, declaring that no one dare rain on my parade.

"Identical Twins, Roselle, New Jersey 1967" by Diane Arbus

Meet Diane Arbus - A Journey into the Surreal

Jordyn Rozensky

At first glance Diane Arbus might seem like an odd role model.  To many she is simply a photographer of freaks. Her name is usually associated with the marginal and with what some call the “deviant.” Author Norman Mailer once said “giving a camera to Diane Arbus is like putting a live grenade in the hands of a child.” She struggled with depression for most her life and committed suicide in 1971 at the age of 48. She might not be the best example of a nice Jewish girl, but she is my choice for Women’s History Month.

Topics: Photography
Sophie Rabinoff, 1918

Meet Sophie Rabinoff as the Camera Saw Her

Stephen Benson

Sometimes at JWA a story insists on coming to life. 

The article on Sophie Rabinoff  in our online Encyclopedia was a good scholarly representation of the pioneering physician's life and work. But no photos accompanied it; nothing helped lift it off the page. A few weeks ago, her great niece Jennifer Arnold contacted us to say that she had some photos of her aunt and wondered if we could add them to the article.  I told her that we would be happy to, and she kindly scanned and sent them to me.

"95 Lives" Movie Poster

95 Lives: A Film You Should Know About

Tanya Sleiman

Ever wanted to learn more about an amazing, captivating, female pioneer only to find the story undocumented, or worse, simply buried? That's what happened to me when I discovered the work of Jewish American photographer Helen Levitt. I am making a film to fill that gaping hole. 95 Lives uncovers Helen Levitt's legendary career documenting NYC streets for 70 years and transforming American street photography forever. Born in 1913 in Brooklyn to Jewish Russian parents, Levitt died at aged 95 with an outpouring of obituaries celebrating her art while noting her disdain for fame.

Topics: Photography, Film

Super Mamika

Leah Berkenwald

French photographer Sacha Goldberger found his 91 year-old grandmother Frederika feeling depressed. To cheer her up, he convinced her to appear in a photoshoot as a superhero. The result is outrageous, brilliant, and bold. 

Miriam Goodman, 1938 - 2008

Miriam was a quirky amalgam of old world and new. She resisted cell phones and was certainly no fashion queen, but no new composer was too ‘out there’ for Miriam; no movie too unconventional. Of course, she loved the classics too, but she liked her art to be challenging, to break new ground. In her own life and art, Miriam never stopped breaking new ground.

Sally Cherniavsky Fox, 1929 - 2006

Sally Fox's passion was to gather and share the history of women through visual images. Sometimes this meant finding images of women doing conventional work, but often it meant seeking images of women doing the unexpected…. Her goal was to challenge conventional notions of how women lived their lives in the past.

Diana Mara Henry's photographs of the Women's Pentagon Action protest march

November 17, 1980

“We women are gathering because life on the precipice is intolerable,” Women’s Pentagon Action declared in a unity statement before its march from Arlington National Cemetery to the Pentagon on Nov

Women reading Torah: Empowerment in Photos

Leora Jackson

Earlier this week, a post on The Sisterhood blog (with whom JWA regularly cross-posts) publicized a call from Women of the Wall for photographs of women with Torahs as part of a solidarity movement with WOW, who have been subject to harassment and arrest over the past several months in their attempts to hold egalitarian Rosh Chodesh services at Robinson’s Arch in Jerusalem.

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