"Award-winning #photographer #BillAron, known as the “Dean” of #American #Jewish #photographers, has documented #Jewishlife in the #UnitedStates and around the world for more than 50 years.

Some of his #photographs appeared in the earliest issues of #Moment. Join #Aron for a conversation about his latest endeavor, The World in Front of Me: A Bill Aron Retrospective and accompanying #podcast, co-curated with the American Jewish #Historical Society.

The retrospective showcases his work from the #AmericanSouth, #LosAngeles and #NewYork to the #SovietUnion, #Cuba and #Jerusalem. Aron reflects on how documenting Jewish life became his life’s work, how he chose the communities he #photographed, how he got to know his subjects, and over the years what changes he has witnessed in the Jewish world through the lens of his #camera.

In conversation with Moment #Arts and Articles Editor #DianeBolz. Co-sponsored by #AJHS."

https://momentmag.com/through-the-lens-of-jewish-life-a-frame-by-frame-journey-with-bill-aron-and-diane-bolz/

"For #BillAron, every #picture is a study in liveliness and colloquial warmth, and he has deployed this warmth to capture #Jewish life over the past 50 years. As he tells it, the decisive moment of taking a picture is the end point of a much larger journey. “I’ve often thought that #photography is so much more than the moment when you press the shutter,” he told the Center for #Jewish History, which is currently hosting a career-spanning retrospective of his work. “Doubtless it is an important moment, when you press the shutter, but I thought that moment really represents how I feel about what’s going on. It also represents a history.”

For Aron, those feelings are centered in his deep reverence for human #stories."

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/arts-letters/articles/jews-on-film-bill-aron

“I have to tell you,” #BillAron told me as he walked around The World In Front of Me, a retrospective of his #photography at the #American #Jewish Historical Society, “my photography allowed me to walk into rooms I might never have otherwise walked into.”

We had just looked at some of his work documenting #Jews on the #LowerEastSide of #Manhattan in the 1970s and ’80s: a #sofer bent over a #Torah scroll, a glowering #rabbi with imposing eyebrows, a #Hasidic wedding in the #Bobover movement. Each #photo begat the next; when he showed a reticent subject the results of his #film, they would invite him back to take more.

Aron has become known for his work documenting Jewish communities around the world — his first book, From the Corners of the Earth, shows Jewish life in #NewYork, #LosAngeles, #Cuba and the then-#Soviet Union. His next, Shalom Y’all, was the result of a decade spent in the lesser-known Jewish communities of the American #South.

His images are joyous..."

https://forward.com/culture/803284/bill-aron-american-jewish-historical-society/