Laurence Salzmann’s photographs do not simply record the Jewish past. They capture Jewish lives, communities and their everyday rituals, which are infinitely difficult to document. His photographs are not about the spectacular aspects of the metropolis. Nor are they about monuments; they are about the moment, about movement - about life.
Cemetery: The present, with the past, runs much deeper, Salzmann’s photographs of Jewish relics seem to say. This closeup of a Jewish tombstone in Ortakoy cemetery where Hebrew letters meet Ottoman ornamentation, with the Bosporus bridge, as the background, is an elegant attestation. One can hear the roar of traffic: hordes of cars crisscrossing Europe and Asia.
MOURNING: La Meza de Guevo. In La Meza de Guevo, Salzmann takes us to the mourning ceremony for the mother of the acclaimed photographer Izet Keribar. We see two brothers sitting by the table in mourning costumes. We hear the kaddish. We smell the anise that oozes from Raki. We share the pain.
Salzmann, a native Philadelphian, donated his life's work to the Penn Libraries in 2018. The Laurence and Ayşe Gürsan Salzmann Collection, from which these two images are drawn, consists of over twenty discrete projects which span over fifty years and four continents, is distinguished by his exquisite aesthetic and unique anthropological field-work. These two photographs belong to a body of material he published as Anyos Munchos i Buenos, co-authored with Ayşe Gürsan-Salzmann (Blue Flower/Photo Review,1990).
