NEW YORK (Press Release) — The team behind the award-winning documentary Finding Kalman has published an interactive archive of Holocaust remembrance portraits, bridging the past and the present, biography and imagery, and leveraging the power of art to discuss difficult subjects.
Naïve artists have created more than 500 black-and-white pastel portraits of Holocaust survivors, victims, and rescuers, using source photographs from the collection of United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and Yad Vashem. The majority of these portraits were made in educational workshops around the U.S., and in Poland and Hungary held by renowned artist and documentary filmmaker Roz Jacobs. Each likeness reflects the artists’ observation of historic photographs and their sensitivity to the subjects they encounter. By engaging in the creative process and working with the elements of light and shadow, individuals explore the kindness and darkness in our collective history as they connect to diverse personal stories of love, loss, and heroism.
For the first time, all of these images are available in a searchable archive that enables visitors to see dozens of interpretations of the same person; the growing database of new works composed at schools, museums, and arts organizations can be sorted by the site of the workshop or by the artist’s name. Visitors can then see the original photographs and read brief biographies of the subjects in the pictures.
Now, classrooms and cultural centers, families and communities, can visit MemoryProjectProductions.com to learn how to create their own “Remembrance Portraits” and upload the finished artworks to the Memory Project database. The Portrait of the Month, curated by Memory Project Productions, will gain extra exposure through the organization’s social media channels.
Founder and Executive Director Laurie Weisman said, “Many have used the phrase ‘never forget’ in response to the atrocities of the Holocaust; our goal has always been to support the notion of remembrance, through education, conversation, and the visual arts.”
“I’ve been working with so-called traditional media for most of my career,” added Creative Director, Roz Jacobs, “but, thanks to digital tools, the ability for people around the world to connect and engage is just incredible.”
Resources available on the interactive website include an instrucitonal video and guide so that anyone can use the same techniques to create and submit their own portraits. It is especially geared toward those who believe they can’t “do art.”
The award-winning film Finding Kalman, related museum exhibits, and outreach program The Memory Project are produced by Memory Project Productions, Inc., a 501(c) (3) nonprofit organization that honors Holocaust and genocide victims by conveying their experiences through art, story and media to make connections across generations and cultures. Memory Project Productions was founded by New York–based artist, videographer, and writer Roz Jacobs and Laurie Weisman, a specialist in multimedia education and former Children’s Television Workshop executive. The Memory Project exhibit has been featured at museums throughout the United States, Poland, and Hungary. The book Finding Kalman: A Boy in Six Million, a lavishly illustrated “memoir in two voices” written by Roz Jacobs and her mother, Anna, was published in 2012 by Abingdon Square Publishing.
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Preceding provided by Memory Project Productions
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