Through the Lens of Faith

Englander, CarylBorn in Florida in 1954, documentary and portrait photographer Caryl Englander lives and works in New York, where she is Chair of the International Center of Photography. In 1993 Englander gained a masters of photography from the dual program of New York University and the International Center of Photography. She has created portraits for and taught at the Jewish Community Center in Manhattan, and her exhibitions include "Acts of Charity, Deeds of Kindness" for the Metropolitan Council on Jewish Poverty in 2005, comprising photo-essays exploring the varied humanitarian functions of the council.Lustiger Thaler, HenriHenri Lustiger Thaler is chief curator of the Amud Aish Memorial Museum in Brooklyn, Professor of Historical Sociology at Ramapo College of New Jersey, and Research Associate of the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris. Lustiger Thaler is a writer, filmmaker and the director of the Orthodox Testimony Project at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington. His exhibition work has appeared internationally and he is the author and editor of seven books, most recently Witnessing Unbound: Holocaust Representation and the Origins of Memory (2017).Libeskind, DanielPolish-American architect Daniel Libeskind is an international figure in architecture and urban design who aims to create work that is resonant, original and sustainable. Liebeskind established his architecture studio in Berlin in 1989, after winning the competition to build the city's Jewish Museum. In February 2003 Studio Libeskind moved from Berlin to New York to oversee the master plan for the World Trade Center redevelopment in Lower Manhattan. Liebeskind's practice involves designing and realizing a diverse array of international urban, cultural and commercial projects worldwide.

Through the Lens of Faith is Caryl Englander's original and affecting visual archive of witnesses of the Holocaust, presented alongside conversations exploring their diverse belief systems. Englander's subjects are between the ages of 80 and 102, and she photographed them during emotive moments of interviewing over the past three years. The resulting portraits encapsulate mnemonic tensions between an unmasterable past and the present.Englander photographed intense discursive encounters during which writer Henri Lustiger Thaler, who has interviewed hundreds of Holocaust survivors, asked Englander's subjects to share their stories of Auschwitz, centering on the question of faith: how did it express itself in an environment that was its complete antithesis? Lustiger Thaler's careful arrangement of the survivors' voices presents their complex spiritual responses and narrates the brutality of everyday life in the concentration camp. In his own words: "We present stories that are very different from epic-like narratives of 'spiritual resistance.' We engage everyday accounts of life in Auschwitz-Birkenau, where faith functioned as a human anchor, a touchstone for expressions of identity and longings for freedom."Through the Lens of Faith will furthermore be realized as an exhibition designed by Daniel Libeskind, the renowned architect of memorial spaces including Berlin's Jewish Museum. Opening on 1 July 2019 at the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum Memorial site and displayed for the entire 75th commemorative year (2020) of the liberation of the camp, the exhibition is estimated to be seen by approximately 4 million visitors. Libeskind's moving design juxtaposes Englander's photos against the visceral entry to Auschwitz, creating confrontation between symbols of imprisonment and freedom.