Holocaust Museum Houston

Life: Survivor Portraits

In Hebrew, 18 is “chai,” meaning life, and Holocaust Museum Houston’s upcoming exhibition “Life: “Survivor Portraits” servesasanexplorationand a celebration of the lives that Houston-area survivors of theHolocaust have created for themselves. Beginning on June 26, 2014, during the Museum’s 18th anniversary year, this new series by local artist Kelly Lee Webeck will include 18 portraits of local survivors and 18 images that document the home space each survivor has created. The exhibit will include36gelatin silver prints. To increase the exhibit’s interactivity, broaden accessibility andextend its reachbeyond thephysical and temporal exhibit, two iPadswill include additional images not shown on the walls. Through the use of technology, these images, and the 36 images in the show will be available through the iPad technology utilized in theMuseum’sDigital Trunkprogram.On the digital screens, the photographs can be viewed and used in classrooms and other community spaces to continue the inquiry begun in the exhibit space.

survivor community. In 2010, I envisioned a project and wrote to several survivors I had come to know and care about, asking if anyone would be willing to participate in this portrait photography project. “Inmany cases, I had listened to survivors talk about their experiences during theHolocaust; often, I heard their stories numerous times. I wondered what their lives were like when not in the Holocaust museum setting. I yearned toseewhere they lived,what lifewas likewhen they were at home. As part of the project, I went to their homesandasked tosee thespaces they had created for themselves. “I have always been interested in the objects people choose to surround themselves with and how the spaces people create become a part of their identity. The time I spendwith survivors, making images, is not about testimony or war. It is about the lives they have created for themselves since thewar; it is about who andhow they are in their home space. I think portraits could be equivalent to a visual testimony, and for me, these images, made on film, offer moments of quiet reflection. In my subjects’ homes, I find spaces and moments that speak of identity, memory and passion. There are stories that canbe learned through reading the lines in their faces andobserving the objects they surround themselves with, the things that are special to them, mostly acquired in the years after thewar.”

InWebeck’swords:

“IhaveworkedwithHolocaustMuseumHoustonsince 2007, when I began photographically documenting the Warren Fellowship for Future Teachers. Since then, I have found myself becoming close to the

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