About jew
 

A number of years ago whilst on a photo assignment in Brooklyn, New York, I was accompanied by two members of Shomrim, the local Jewish uniformed patrol. While talking, I asked about the types of crime they encounter.  They said there was some white collar crime, some accounting irregularities. I found this to be quite surprising. Later I casually Googled, how many Jews are there on death row? It turned out that according to a Jewish Chronicle article dated 2010, there could be up to 20 in Florida alone. It seems they had been omitted from Jewish consciousness. 

At another time, while in a conversation about online commentary, a friend posed the question, ‘where is normal?’ Reflecting on this, I knew the answer resided with the unsung and the unknown. The ordinary as well as the extraordinary. Normal, is not a matter of editing to suit a particular narrative or political idea, it’s not curated. Rather it is a miscellany of all life’s colour. 

I decided to embark on a series of portraits of Jews. Not just the great and the good, it had to include the homeless Jew, as well as the rich Jew. The incarcerated Jew as well as the law abiding Jew, the religious and the secular. Not onIy that, but my feeling was it also had to include Jews from different ethnicities, Jews of colour.

I took as the inspiration for the project, the work of August Sander, a German photographer born in Cologne in 1876 who attempted to photograph the people of inter-war Germany in a project entitled, People of the 20th Century.  However unlike Sander, I photographed each portrait against a simple plain background. My intention was to remove the surrounding detail, the clues if you like, at each location such that each portrait is deliberately de-contextualised. The only context being, that they are all Jews.

The project has taken four years, and the odyssey has been an amazing one. To date, I have been to 12 countries including; Azerbaijan, Argentina, China, India, Ethiopia, Ukraine, Austria and Morocco, plus of course, US and Israel. Each portrait is titled not by a name but rather a job or another qualifier. So for example; Spy, Rape Victim, Nobel laureate, Refuse Collector etc.

An unadorned snapshot that challenges the received view of world Jewry. 

John Offenbach