Mina Kiszelewski Liliane Gerst Nicole Blum Joseph Kiszelewski Chaja Garbasz Mejshele Katz Blumke Levin Avrom Leib
Victor Rona Agnes Lebovics Emmanuel Alper Girl in the Woods Frieda Schwarz-Kuppers Deutsch Son Ketubbah Gelb Henri Flamenbaum
Little Deutsch Rutke Lieblich's Brother Lili Anna Klein Etty Hillesum Rutke Lieblich Jacques Finkelstein Maurice Cukierman Moshe Flinker
Suzanne Driay Susanne Lederman Robert Glasman Klara Zuckermann Peter Ginz Teresa and Milo's Little Boy, Romus Andre Israel
Esther and Frima Fridman Ida Cukierman Ursula Ploschitzky Daniel Stein Dr. Erich Lindemann Charlotte Lilly Emma Werber Esther Jaffe
Gelb Daughter Hanneruth Scheier Kim Malthe Bruun Liliane Gerenstein Lore and Ernst Simons Malka Stein Yossele Stein

soul portraits: a painting project

This workshop is an invitation to students to step outside of themselves and make friends with a new face in an old photograph. The workshop will offer students “access” to the genesis of a portrait, to the sacred and historic act of memorialization, to the idea of Eternity, and, finally, the tools to build a bridge over the fear, horror, and denial that paralyzes us in the face of racism and genocide. As a portrait artist, when I look at each painting now, after studying a subject’s face for an intensive period while striving for a likeness, I feel I am seeing a lifelong friend; this is the healing and learning experience of connection I want to share. Portraits are living memorials. When a friend dies, the ritual of creating a living memorial, in any form we invent, can be integrating, progressive, and healing. It’s true: we can’t bring these little souls back their lives. But we can make friends with a face, and we can memorialize our friend.

This project will require a minimum of four or five sessions to complete, though more classroom time may be devoted to it according to teachers’ needs. The first session might be a presentation to students of my portraits: projecting images onto a screen (via my website, gallery: soul portraits, might be easiest). At the end of the presentation, each student will be presented with an archival (prewar) photograph (of a child who later died in the Holocaust) to be memorialized by the student as a painted portrait. Photographic references can be found in the many photographic resource archives, e.g., The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum website, The Simon Wiesenthal Center website, French Children of the Holocaust: A Memorial by Serge Klarsfeld, etc.

For homework, students should spend around thirty minutes making preliminary sketches of the subject in the photograph. This is to encourage the process of “looking” and thus the development of the “relationship.” Teacher will remind students to keep looking closely at their subjects throughout each phase of the project.

The portraits will be painted with acrylic or oil on wooden panels -- a reference to historic religious icons. Wooden panels will be primed and “underpainted” – the first color layer covering the entire surface of the picture plane -- in advance.

On the second day students will begin their portraits by developing composition (considering issues regarding presentation - head only?, bust?, profile?, - and simple division and organization of the picture plane). Teacher will encourage students to base all aesthetic decisions on their incipient relationships with their subjects and to look closely at their subjects. Students will then sketch in the basic compositional shapes -- to organize the picture plane -- either in line with pencil or by mixing colors and painting in basic compositional shapes/fields. Next students will begin preliminary facial development by first mixing up a spectrum of tonalities of skin color, analyzing tonal shapes in their subjects’ faces, and then beginning to paint in areas. Teacher will demonstrate differences in feature distribution and proportion in the facial anatomy of adults and children. Teacher will remind students to keep looking at their subjects – back and forth, back and forth, subject and portrait - and to very carefully analyze feature relationships: where the eyes are in relation to the hairline, how far the nose is above the mouth and to the right and left of the ears, etc.

On the third and fourth days students will continue working on facial development and striving for a likeness using this kind of analysis. For homework teacher will ask students to begin to consider a “gift” they might choose to give to their subjects; they might write some text into the portrait, adhere a found image, paint in a object, put their subject into a context - anything meaningful to the student to personalize their memorial and to bring in another dimension. This additional element is optional.

On the fifth day students will work on background and any additional imagery or text. Students will have a chance to talk as a group about their experiences and their plans for completing their works. Teacher will encourage students to follow this visual exercise with some personal writing; by now a real relationship will likely have developed between student and subject. Students may wish to write a letter to their subject, a poem, an essay, or simply a journal entry to process their experiences.