As many countries are reassessing their responses to mass immigration, Max Hirshfeld, one of the great American photographers working today, delves deep into the visual memory of the Holocaust—a subject difficult to grasp and almost impossible to document—to share the story of his parents’ enduring love in a time of war.
Max’s parents, Polish Jews who survived the Holocaust raised him in a small city in Alabama, where life in the South of the 1950s and 1960s was quiet and mostly idyllic. But lurking under the surface was a remarkable yet tension-filled history that fully revealed itself only after he had a family of his own. Max knew the outer perimeters of his parent’s story − the challenges of being Jewish in a place that increasingly alienated them, their individual trajectories as they moved through adulthood, and their chance meeting and secret romance in the Polish ghetto.
But it took a pilgrimage to Poland with his mother in 1993 (and the discovery of post-war letters between his parents) to more fully acquaint him with the depths of their tragedies and the exceptional love story that sustained them throughout separation until they were reunited in the USA in 1949.
Though Sweet Noise: Love in Wartime (Damiani – October 2019) features events that began seventy-five years ago, the material is eerily timely. As Eastern Europe grapples with this horrific legacy, and many countries are reassessing their responses to mass immigration, those in a position to bear witness need a supportive environment wherein art and language serve to remind the world what can occur when hatred and the concept of ethnic cleansing are given free rein.
Max Hirshfeld was born in North Carolina in 1951 and grew up in Decatur, Alabama. He moved to Washington, DC to study photography at George Washington University, graduating in 1973. His work has been shown at the Corcoran Gallery of Art, the Kreeger Museum and is represented by leading galleries in Washington, DC and Boston. He has won silver and bronze awards from the Prix de la Photographie Paris and been featured in both Communication Arts and American Photography. Hirshfeld’s editorial work has been published in The New York Times Magazine, Time, Vanity Fair, and other US publications, and his advertising work has been showcased in campaigns for American Airlines, Amtrak, Canon and IBM, among others. Sweet Noise: Love in Wartime is his first book.
Michael Berenbaum is an American scholar, professor, rabbi, writer and filmmaker, who specialises in the study of the Holocaust. He is currently the Director of the Sigi Ziering Institute: Exploring the Ethical and religious Implications of the Holocaust, in Los Angeles. From 1997-1999, he served as President and CEO of the Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation. Berenbaum played a leading role in the creation of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum where he served as Project Director (1988-1993). He also served as Director of the USHMM’s Holocaust Research Institute (1993-1997) and as Deputy Director of the President’s Commission on the Holocaust (1979-1980).
Stuart E. Eizenstat is an American diplomat and attorney. From 1977 to 1981, he was President Jimmy Carter’s Chief White House Domestic Policy Advisor. In the Clinton Administration he served as US Ambassador to the EU and was also Special Representative of President Clinton and Secretary of State Madeleine Albright on Holocaust Era Issues, bringing Holocaust restitution and justice issues back onto the international agenda. He has held many other key roles for the Clinton Administration and after, received nine honorary degrees, and other awards from the governments of Frances (Legion of Honour), Israel, Germany, Austria, France, Belgium, and the USA.
ISBN 978-88-6208-660-8
185 x 241 mm
200 pages 1 colour 40 B&W hardback £40
Published 18 November 2019
https://www.sweetnoisebook.com/
