Foto Friday – Never Forget
Filed under: Art, design, education, Foto Friday, General, History and Culture, News, Politics, War
Keeping The Memory Alive (Children in the Holocaust) is a poster contest being mounted across the world to mark International Holocaust Remembrance Day, which is today (Friday).
An international panel of distinguished judges, comprising experts in both design and in Holocaust Education, selected the 16 best posters from more than 300 submitted by design students from France, Israel and the Czech Republic. They were asked to present works on the theme of Holocaust commemoration, with an emphasis on the nature of memory and the plight of children.
The three finalists designed posters that stood out for their originality, beauty, and meaning.
The work by Veronica Novakova, a designer from the Czech Republic, portrays a well-known childhood punishment. “Traditionally, to correct a child’s errant behavior, an adult will force the ‘naughty’ child to write his misdeed over and over again, until he ‘learns his lesson.’ In this case, the misdeed is written by a child who is forced to denounce his friendship with a Jewish friend.
Designer Martina Cejpova also explores the effect the Nazi anti-Jewish policy had on children. “In her poster, she depicts a universally-recognized image from childhood: a hopscotch board, chalked onto the pavement. This particular game, however, is marred by a hateful symbol of discrimination drawn onto its cross-arms – the yellow star. Its inclusion here indicates that the insidious and pervasive hatred perpetrated by the adult world has also filtered down to the world of children, destroying their innocence.”
French designer Boris Grzeszcak deals with another theme in his work – the nature of memory. “His black-and-white poster presents a striking image of a scarred tree cut to expose the rings. A deep gash cuts to the very core of the trunk, where the word “emet” (truth) is written in tiny letters… [The artist says,] ‘The truth resides in the act of remembering and above all, never forgetting these dramatic events.’”
Peter Chmela of the Czech Republic says, “This poster wants to show the impotence of Jewish children against the Nazi soldiers. I tried to illustrate this theme with a big contrast between soldier and child.”
Yael Boverman, Israel: “The object that a survivor carries throughout a lifetime enables him or her to keep their memory alive. The closet symbolizes a collective closet, reflecting the repressed memories of the Jewish people as a whole. For every survivor, the memory is forever present under the thin veil of everyday functioning, represented by the new shirts, but at the bottom of the stack, there always lies the shirt kept from a different time – the persisting memory of a past that refuses to be abandoned.”
The project is funded by the Task Force for International Cooperation on Holocaust Education, Remembrance and Research (ITF), together with Yad Vashem, Israel; Mémorial de la Shoah, France; and the European Shoah Legacy Institute, Czech Republic; in cooperation with the Holocaust and the United Nations Outreach Programme.
In addition to the posters, there is also a lesson plan that provides tools to aid students and teachers in discussing the more universal aspects of memory — as well as the challenges facing those who use the visual arts to commemorate the Holocaust today.
Shoe shopping
Need shoes? Then again, does one ever, really, need shoes?
After years of not enough shoes in Israel, unattractive imported shoes or too-familiar, Teva Naot, Nimrod and other sandal-focused shoes — Israeli shoe designers have been multiplying at a welcome rate, joined by their brethren in spirit and style, accessories designers.
In fact, there are so many shoemakers, so to speak, that shoe and accessories man Jonathan Proim — whose wife Michal Miller is one of the designers — is hosting the second Zugot (Pairs) shoe fair this coming weekend.
Held at Beitan 10 of the Tel Aviv fairgrounds — Ganei Hataarucha — there will be 40 brands, 30 of them shoes, selling their wares at end-of-year prices. Most of the designers are local, but there are some imported brands, such as Fly London, which carries a certain Israeli sensibility, says Proim.
Last fair, some 8,000 people attended over the course of two days, and he says the designers have learned to up their inventory before setting up for the fair, and will have enough shoes to meet demand.
The fair will also include accessories, bags, socks and tights, and shoes for men, women and children. But no Crocs.
Friday, January 27-Saturday, January 28
10-7 Friday
10-10 Saturday
NIS 10 entrance fee
Foto Friday – Retrospective for fashion-forward Mula Eshet
Filed under: Art, design, Foto Friday, General, History and Culture, Pop Culture, Profiles
In our time, photo manipulation has become as much a part of fashion photography as the photographers themselves. Without Photoshop, a new photo exhibition, opening this week at Holon’s Beit Meirov Art Gallery, takes that concept to task, presenting works from the 60s, 70s, and 80s by fashion photographer Mula Eshet. In those times, as the title implies, photographers worked hard to present the camera lens with the most arresting and interesting scenarios because there were no second chances.
In a radio interview today, Eshet said that he, together with his wife, the artist Dalia Eshet, always tried to find unusual locations and tell a story that expressed thought and originality. Venues like the Dead Sea, the zoo, the streets of Tel Aviv and even the Lebanon War were his backdrops. The couple served as stylists, makeup artists, directors, producers, designers — even model scouts, as there were no modeling agencies when they first started.
Eshet: “In the pre-modeling agency days, the relationship between fashion houses and myself was direct. Entire collections were sent to my studio and from that moment on until I got the photo I wanted I dealt with finding the models, designing and producing the image (including location and accessories) — and ‘decorating’ the model (the term ‘styling’ didn’t exist [in Israel])”.
Dalia Eshet: “He loved select the ones that came with a background in dance and movement. The model’s personality was an important component expressed in his photography”.
The exhibition presents photographs of those personalities, including Israel’s leading fashion models of the period, such as Penina Rosenblum circa 1972, before she became Israel’s most famous cosmetics queen / reality show / hoochie mama / ex-Knesset member…
Heli Goldberg went on to an acting career – including one of her best-known roles as a shopping cart bashing pudding thief in “The Battle For Milky” commercial…
The amazing Michaela Berko, Israel’s first 80s supermodel export (who recently paid homage to her famous Vogue cover on the cover of Israel’s La-Isha magazine)…
Exotic Tami Ben-Ami, who lived a supermodel’s life before they gave it a name. She dated wildly popular basketball player Aulcie Perry and was Gottex’s first house model. Sadly, she died of cancer in 1995 at just 40 years old.
The exhibition photos were selected from tens of thousands of images saved by the Eshets over the years, published in Israeli fashion magazines, catalogs, posters, ads and more. Definitely worth checking out, as is this report about Mula Eshet in his heyday.
A cheesy metaphor
Filed under: Art, design, education, Entertainment, Food, General, History and Culture, Immigrant Moments, Israeliness, Life, Movies
More about food. Sort of.
The Gad cheese grandfather
Carpet tiles (Photo credit: Tchochkes)
But the point of the video, says one commentator, is to recognize the metaphor of the movie. The peak in life, is not necessarily the refrigerator shelf, where it appears that everyone should be situated. But rather, the garbage pail, which may represent the margins of society or a greater mix of products, may offer more self-expression, and, more happiness.
It’s good to get the inner meaning, but you can just appreciate the clever aspects of this student project that has already been viewed more than 30,000 times.
Foto Friday – Tal Menkes’ Dreadful Delights
Filed under: Art, Blogging, design, Entertainment, Foto Friday, General, Israeliness, Picture of the Week, Pop Culture, Profiles
Tal Menkes is a copywriter at advertising agency Mccann Erickson, Tel-Aviv, Israel. In addition to his day job of penning award-winning ads, Menkes’ fevered brain works overtime several times a week to create Mutzar Ayom, a photoblog of seemingly useful yet cheerfully useless objects.
The name takes the hackneyed shopping channel phrase mutzar ha-yom, “product of the day”, and replaces it with the word ayom, meaning “horrible”. And indeed, many of the products are in fact, delightfully dreadful examples of visual wordplay.
Some of the ideas are universal in nature — others are unmistakably Israeli, for example, this toy soldier armed with mother’s cooking…
Water concentrate, as opposed to the ubiquitous sugary red mitz petel, so ingrained in the Israeli child’s psyche — and the Israeli child’s teeth!
A reversed three-fer electric adaptor…
A floor squeegee that actually gets into corners…
And my personal favorite, the real and original dubon coat.
Menkes also runs a Mutzar Ayom Facebook page in which followers are invited to comment on recent postings and share their own imaginary product ideas. Who knows, some might even make it into production — after all, if the Crembox can be an actual product fulfilling an actual need, then anything’s possible.
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