Diaspora: Homelands In Exile

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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.