Museum Exhibition Catalogues, Monographs, Artist's Projects, Curatorial Writings and Essays
"I want people to love everybody I photographed, as I did when I was photographing them, as I have and as I do." Gay Block, excerpted from a conversation with Anne Wilkes Tucker, published in Gay Block: About Love.
A new, redesigned edition of Gay Block and Malka Drucker’s classic photobook documenting those who risked their lives to rescue Jews from the Holocaust
Hbk, 10 x 12 in. / 256 pgs / 100 color. | 8/4/2020 | In stock $55.00
Published by Radius Books. Text by Malka Drucker, Samantha Baskind.
First published in 1992 to widespread acclaim, Rescuers: Portraits of Moral Courage in the Holocaust is a landmark photobook on the commemoration of the Holocaust. Featuring photograph portraits, archives and interviews, it was the first book (and exhibition) by Houston-born photographer Gay Block (born 1942); the exhibition has been seen in over 50 venues in the US and abroad, including the Museum of Modern Art, New York.
Block spent more than three years traveling in eight countries, accompanied by rabbi and author Malka Drucker, documenting testimonies from more than 100 rescuers—people who risked their lives to rescue Jewish victims from the Holocaust. The stories range from those who saved one life to those who worked in the resistance and saved thousands, always with the threat of death and torture if they were discovered.
This new edition features a complete redesign and new foreword by scholar of Jewish American art Samantha Baskind.
Published by Radius Books. Text by Anne Wilkes Tucker.
Gay Block (born 1942) began photographing her own affluent Jewish community in Houston in 1973. She expanded this study to include Jewish senior citizens in south Miami Beach, focusing with affection on the "bubbies" or grandmothers that (she attests) she wished she herself had had as a child. Later, Block's landmark work, Rescuers: Portraits of Moral Courage in the Holocaust, made in collaboration with writer Malka Drucker, explored the lives of non-Jewish Europeans who risked their lives to hide Jews from the Nazis. This series was exhibited at The Museum of Modern Art in 1992, and has been exhibited internationally. In 2003, Block's 30-year series of photo-, video- and written portraits of her mother, Bertha Alyce: Mother exPosed, was published to great acclaim and was cited as one of "Twelve Great Books Published During the Year 2003" by The Review of Arts, Literature, Politics and the Humanities. Here, for the first time, About Love surveys more than 30 years of Block's intimate and moving portraits. She explains the title thus: "Through photography, I have learned about love. I hadn't learned about it at home or in school... I couldn't have learned about love without photography, and I'm still learning." Organized chronologically, and published in an oversize format that is designed to evoke the idea of a family album, the book offers a thorough overview of the artist's approach to portraiture.