Lunchtime Lectures: On Jewish Photography

The question, “What is Jewish Art?" has been debated by scholars for centuries. In recent decades, art historians and curators have noted the preponderance of Jewish photographers who have shaped the medium. Over that same period, arts institutions have increasingly foregrounded the ethnicity and cultural specificity of artists as a lens through which to understand their work, yet Jewish historiography – including forced exile and migration and the role that it plays in shaping the lives and work of photographers – has been avoided or omitted from exhibitions, biographies, and discussions of artists’ work. How does the role of Jewish biography and Jewish identity shape our understanding of the work of Jewish photographers? Is there such a thing as a Jewish photograph or, as some have claimed, a "Jewish sensibility" in photography? 
 

This talk will explore the unique contribution of Jews who shaped the history and medium of photography, including the practice of image-making, the role of exile and migration in the transmission of modernism, the dissemination of images as political and visual activism, and the role of Jewish family albums in storytelling.

Maya Benton is a New York–based museum curator and art historian. From 2008 to 2019, she was a Curator at the International Center of Photography (ICP), where she built a major archive and organized the three most widely traveled exhibitions in ICP’s history. She has curated numerous international exhibitions and writes frequently on photography, museums, and Jewish visual and material culture. Over her thirty-year museum career, she has held positions at the Getty Museum, RISD Museum, Jewish Museum of Florence, Harvard Art Museums, and ICP, and has served as curator‑in‑residence at institutions worldwide. Her award‑winning catalogues and research have been translated into more than a dozen languages.

She is currently at work on her book The Jewishness of Photography and establishing the Jews and Photography Initiative (JPI), a global collaborative exploring Jewish contributions to the history of photography, including the creation of a Jewish Vernacular Photography Archive. She also teaches a course on Jews and Photography at Yale University.

Maya is a graduate of Brown University, the Courtauld Institute of Art, and Harvard University.

Supported by the Gilbert Trust for the Arts