WEEKEND PROGRAM | Beyond Naked City: Jews and Urban Photography

Start Date:
End Date:
Location:
Yiddish Book Center
1021 West Street
Amherst, MA 01002
United States

 

Register by October 24 for our weekend program on New York Jewish photographers with Professor Deborah Dash Moore.

Rebecca Lepkoff, Under the 3rd Avenue El, 1947
Rebecca Lepkoff, Under the 3rd Ave. El, 1947
©Estate of Rebecca Lepkoff, Courtesy of Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York


The Jewish photographer, Weegee (Arthur Fellig), gave the title Naked City to a photobook that he published in 1945, which became first a bestseller and then a murder mystery movie. Though Weegee hit the jackpot with Naked City, he was not alone in snapping pictures of New York. This course looks at a cluster of New York Jewish photographers who pictured the city, their home, in the middle decades of the 20th century. As young men and women, mostly the children of immigrants, they picked up cameras and walked the streets, capturing its human drama. Today we can look through their eyes at the city as they saw it—its beauty and ugliness, poverty and poetry, grace and loneliness. 

Professor Deborah Dash Moore of the University of Michigan will lead this weekend program, which includes lectures, film screenings, kosher meals, and plenty of great conversation. See the full program schedule below.

LECTURES:

Lecture 1: "Naked City, Weegee’s People"

The course begins with the most enduring vision of New York to emerge from the middle decades of the 20th century: a vision of murder and mayhem, of crowded streets and lonesome men, of drunken brawls and brave fire fighters. Arthur Fellig, a Jewish immigrant from Lemburg, arrived on the Lower East Side as a boy. Poor and entrepreneurial, he found his identity and career as Weegee, a freelance news photographer. In the 21st century, debates have flourished over the caliber of his photographs, whether he should be taken seriously or dismissed as a hack. But no one challenges his role in shaping the noir aesthetic that flourished in the years after World War II. 

Lecture 2: "Before Weegee, Alfred Stieglitz’s New York"

Weegee met Alfred Stieglitz, the acclaimed Jewish American photographer and gallery owner, shortly before Stieglitz’s death. The encounter led Weegee to contrast his own use of photographs as documents with Stieglitz’s devotion to elevating photography to an art form. In this lecture we’ll explore the varied views of New York that Stieglitz produced, from pictorialist images dating to the late 19th century to modernist ones of the 1920s. As the city changed, so did Stieglitz. We will also consider the significance of his iconic photograph, “The Steerage.”

Lecture 3: "Women Walkers in the City"

What happens when women pick up a camera and go out to walk the city’s streets? This lecture looks at several Jewish women photographers—Helen Levitt, Rebecca Lepkoff, Vivian Cherry—who practiced street photography in the 1940s. “Life was in the streets,” recalled Ida Wyman, another Jewish woman photographer. “That’s where you were. Nobody thought of it as street photography. Most photographers’ photos were out of doors.” Do we see the city differently when we look through women’s eyes? 

Lecture 4: "On Display"

New York was not just a city of concrete and brick. It was made up of islands (in fact, only the Bronx is part of the continental United States), surrounded by rivers and bays and ocean. Coney Island, with miles of beaches, drew crowds every summer and photographers followed. There on the crowded beach, one could photograph scenes of intimacy. This lecture looks at pictures of Coney Island taken by Sid Grossman, Morris Engel, and Lou Bernstein. 

COST:

$350 for Yiddish Book Center members; $425 for nonmembers. Join or renew your membership now to take advantage of the member discount. Then return here to continue the registration process. Registration closes October 15.

Cancellation Policy: Cancellations by October 15, 2018 will be refunded, minus a $30 administration fee per registered participant. Unfortunately, we are not able to provide a refund for cancellations after October 15.

HOTEL INFORMATION:

Due to various university events happening in the Amherst area, hotels tend to fill up quickly, so we encourage you to make arrangements for accommodations as soon as possible. The local Econo Lodge (413-582-7077) is offering our participants a discounted rate, pending availability at the time you call. To ensure this rate, please book no later than September 26th.

Please contact Econo Lodge directly and mention that you are part of our event and would like the "Yiddish Book Center rate." If they have availability, they will give you the discounted rate.

TENTATIVE PROGRAM SCHEDULE:

Friday, October 26
5:30 p.m. — Check in
6:00 p.m. — Shabbos dinner
7:30 p.m. — Lecture 1: "Naked City: Weegee's People"  

Saturday, October 27
10:00 a.m. — Coffee and nosh
10:30 a.m. — Lecture 2: "Before Weegee: Alfred Stieglitz's New York"
12:00 p.m. — Lunch
1:15 p.m. — Film: Naked City (1948, 96 min)

3:15 p.m. — Option 1: Tour of the Center: Enjoy a guided tour of the Yiddish Book Center’s exhibits and book collections. 
Option 2: Through a Yiddish Lens: From Jewish anarchists and folklorists to photo- journalists and shtetl photographers, Yiddish Book Center Bibliographer David Mazower examines some of the many links between Yiddish culture and photography.  
4:30 p.m. — Lecture 3: "Women Walkers in the City"
6:00 p.m. — Dinner

Sunday, October 28
9:30 a.m. — Lecture 4: "On Display"
11:00 a.m. — Coffee and nosh
11:30 a.m. — Film: Little Fugitive (1953, 80 min) and program wrap-up
1:00 p.m. — End of program

FACULTY BIO:

Deborah Dash Moore is Frederick G. L. Huetwell Professor of History and Judaic Studies at the University of Michigan. An historian of American Jews, she has published an acclaimed trilogy examining the years from 1920 to 1960, including the experience of Jewish soldiers in World War II. She is also known as an historian of New York City. In 2001 she published with Howard Rock, Cityscapes: A History of New York in Images and in 2012 she served as general editor for the award-winning three volume City of Promises: A History of Jews in New York City. Her most recent book, Jewish New York: The Remarkable Story of a City and a People, synthesizes those three volumes. From 2005-2015 she served as Director of the University of Michigan’s Jean and Samuel Frankel Center for Judaic Studies. Currently she is Editor-in-Chief of the ten-volume Posen Library of Jewish Culture and Civilization published by Yale University Press.

Questions? Contact Education Program Assistant, Margaret Frothingham at mfrothingham@yiddishbookcenter.org or 413-256-4900, ext. 152.

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