Underwater Photography & the Shtetl
In August of 2020, there was a two day symposium ("Absent Family") in Bialystok, Poland about the lost Jewish communities of that region. One of the main organizers was the renowned filmmaker Tomasz (Tomek) Wisniewski.
Tomek and I had corresponded over the years, after he found some photographs posted online that my grandfather (David Bloom) took when he visited his father's hometown of Goniadz in 1923. Tomek used some of this material for one of his documentaries about the gentile neighbors of these Polish Jews. These images have also appeared in the recent translation of the Goniadz Yiskor book. Here is my jewishgen.org web site on this pre-Shoah community.
In putting together material for the Bialystok symposium, Tomek had the insight of drawing parallels between my underwater photography and my grandfather's photographs of Goniadz. The following are images and video from this portion of the event.
- Michael Rothschild
In August of 2020, there was a two day symposium ("Absent Family") in Bialystok, Poland about the lost Jewish communities of that region. One of the main organizers was the renowned filmmaker Tomasz (Tomek) Wisniewski.
Tomek and I had corresponded over the years, after he found some photographs posted online that my grandfather (David Bloom) took when he visited his father's hometown of Goniadz in 1923. Tomek used some of this material for one of his documentaries about the gentile neighbors of these Polish Jews. These images have also appeared in the recent translation of the Goniadz Yiskor book. Here is my jewishgen.org web site on this pre-Shoah community.
In putting together material for the Bialystok symposium, Tomek had the insight of drawing parallels between my underwater photography and my grandfather's photographs of Goniadz. The following are images and video from this portion of the event.
- Michael Rothschild
Here are the four panels which made up the exhibit of my underwater photographs, presented next to those taken by my grandfather. These are fairly large images, uploaded in high resolution (they were exhibited as wall sized posters). When viewing the gallery, click on the "plus" link at the top left of each image so that you can scroll and read them. On a smartphone, just double tap on the image to expand it.
Here is a short video that Tomek made of my portion of the symposium.