PDA

View Full Version : The Uncanny Tale of Shimmel Zohar



Ari
7-Sep-2020, 08:08
Too interesting to skim over, and wonderful, strange photographs from that era: https://apple.news/AA9k1Y2jFTKKJ8A4SiLdJ0w

Tin Can
7-Sep-2020, 09:37
Great story!

As I was already listening to Old Time Radio I emulated visually

My Dundrearies are well on their way, the tale seems familiar somehow, but I forget more than I know

https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/50316468021_029a217144.jpg (https://flic.kr/p/2jEi3WH)A Me Today (1) (https://flic.kr/p/2jEi3WH) by TIN CAN COLLEGE (https://www.flickr.com/photos/tincancollege/), on Flickr



Too interesting to skim over, and wonderful, strange photographs from that era: https://apple.news/AA9k1Y2jFTKKJ8A4SiLdJ0w

Dan Fromm
7-Sep-2020, 10:20
I read the story in The Atlantic. https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2020/09/uncanny-tale-shimmel-zohar/616060/

The pictures aren't from the 19th century, they were shot during the last 20 years by Stephen Berkman. They're a hoax and they got the first two posters.

Tin Can
7-Sep-2020, 10:30
Did i say I believe in elves?

No I did not and I knew I had seen this story before

By calling it a Hoax Dan you spoil the fun of reading the tale

Gads, get with fun today...

not much left


I read the story in The Atlantic. https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2020/09/uncanny-tale-shimmel-zohar/616060/

The pictures aren't from the 19th century, they were shot during the last 20 years by Stephen Berkman. They're a hoax and they got the first two posters.

Dan Fromm
7-Sep-2020, 11:26
Did i say I believe in elves?

Since you asked, of course you did.

Mark Sawyer
7-Sep-2020, 12:21
There are worse things to believe in... :)

Ari
7-Sep-2020, 17:47
I read the story in The Atlantic. https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2020/09/uncanny-tale-shimmel-zohar/616060/

The pictures aren't from the 19th century, they were shot during the last 20 years by Stephen Berkman. They're a hoax and they got the first two posters.

These days, hoax is a word used by half-wits trying to distract from their more serious inadequacies and failings. I certainly don't include you in that category, Dan.
I should have qualified that sentence to read: "in the style of that era".

Dan Fromm
7-Sep-2020, 18:38
Ari, you're not the hoaxer. Mr. Berkman is.

Two23
7-Sep-2020, 19:13
I love a great story. Thanks for sharing.


Kent in SD

Alan Klein
8-Sep-2020, 07:45
The picture of the Blind Mohel? Blind? Yikes!

.. and Co-joined twins?

Two23
8-Sep-2020, 08:35
I wouldn't call it a hoax, but rather a well crafted satire. As for elves, 90% of Icelanders believe in gnomes.



Kent in SD

Doremus Scudder
8-Sep-2020, 11:22
Ari, you're not the hoaxer. Mr. Berkman is.

Mr. Berkman isn't a hoaxer. This is a consummate combination between conceptual art, photography, and literature, all mysteriously and flawlessly crafted to create a surreal and whimsical whole that pulls me out of my sense of reality into a make-believe world where the 19th century ethos and photographic techniques, Jewish mysticism and a Freudian dream world all meet in Alice's Wonderland. I'm in awe.

Best,

Doremus

Ari
8-Sep-2020, 12:49
Mr. Berkman isn't a hoaxer. This is a consummate combination between conceptual art, photography, and literature, all mysteriously and flawlessly crafted to create a surreal and whimsical whole that pulls me out of my sense of reality into a make-believe world where the 19th century ethos and photographic techniques, Jewish mysticism and a Freudian dream world all meet in Alice's Wonderland. I'm in awe.

Best,

Doremus

I couldn't have said it better.

Dan Fromm
8-Sep-2020, 13:16
Ari, Doremus, the man presented the work as not his. Hoax.

Tin Can
8-Sep-2020, 13:18
must
be

not

art

Jimi
8-Sep-2020, 13:27
How strange it is ... I find it contrived and overdone. The photographs are sort of nice in themselves, but the story ... it lessens the possible impact of the photographs.

Maybe it is because I enjoy the possibility of discovering for myself what the photograph in front of me means to me. Words and photographs together is a tricky business to keep in balance.

Tin Can
8-Sep-2020, 13:29
OK Dan, you win

I am second gen Norsk

The Mythology of Norwegian Trolls (https://www.lifeinnorway.net/norwegian-trolls/)

Ari
8-Sep-2020, 13:42
My reading was he didn't present the work as anything, except as based on the spotty, incomplete translation of Mr Zohar's journals.
I'll re-read the story, but I don't remember a con being part of it.
If anything, it was a very difficult, roundabout way for him to pay tribute to an unknown photographer's work. Yes, there are embellishments and flights of fancy, but these make for a good story.
There was the person of Shimmel Zohar, and the persona as well, the latter being a creation of Berkman's, which was entirely respectful, if not entirely accurate.

Tin Can
8-Sep-2020, 14:29
I miss Dagor 77 aka Sir Andrew of Glover

as he told greaat stories

Doremus Scudder
9-Sep-2020, 10:07
The whole thing is a fantasy invention. Zohar exists only as a fictional character. His quirky biography, photography, studio and subjects are all part of the fantasy-novel-in-reality invented by Berkman. I find the combination of media he uses to bring his character and ideas to life a highly-personal invention, which combines stagecraft with visual arts, literature and, yes, a well-executed con job; all part of the Gesamtkunstwerk.

Or, I could be wrong, and Shimmel Zohar was in reality an eccentric 19th-century Jewish photographer...

Zohar Lives!

Doremus

Scott Davis
10-Sep-2020, 09:12
My reading was he didn't present the work as anything, except as based on the spotty, incomplete translation of Mr Zohar's journals.
I'll re-read the story, but I don't remember a con being part of it.
If anything, it was a very difficult, roundabout way for him to pay tribute to an unknown photographer's work. Yes, there are embellishments and flights of fancy, but these make for a good story.
There was the person of Shimmel Zohar, and the persona as well, the latter being a creation of Berkman's, which was entirely respectful, if not entirely accurate.

Given the depths of invention exhibited by Berkman, the journals may well (probably? are) be as fake as the rest of the story, and aside from the name on the trunk and on the sign in the photograph of the 19th century New York streetscape, have no more bearing on reality than a fish on a bicycle.

I could tell by looking at the plates being shown in the article that they were modern images - the clean ones were TOO clean, and the rough ones were too rough for the 19th century. No self-respecting 19th century photographer would have allowed a plate to be printed or shown that had corduroy or oysters. The clean plates had a 21st century sense of contrast to them - there was something TOO sharp, with too much tonal range.

Vaughn
10-Sep-2020, 10:25
Thank you!

alan_b
10-Sep-2020, 15:47
Love it - thanks for sharing!

hsandler
10-Sep-2020, 21:05
Fascinating read and good photos, thanks Ari.

Jody_S
11-Sep-2020, 08:09
Amusing story and photographs. Makes one think about historical re-enactment, what we're all basically doing shooting LF and those who do wet plate in particular. How far are we willing to take things? How much is performance and how much is 'art' or is there any distinction between the two?

paulbarden
12-Sep-2020, 06:23
I fail to understand why someone's photographic FICTION (its obviously storytelling) should have to suffer the indignity of being labeled FAKE.

Dan Fromm
12-Sep-2020, 08:49
I fail to understand why someone's photographic FICTION (its obviously storytelling) should have to suffer the indignity of being labeled FAKE.

Paul, the perpetrator presented the work as that of an historical figure, not as his own.

sanking
12-Sep-2020, 08:59
My reading was he didn't present the work as anything, except as based on the spotty, incomplete translation of Mr Zohar's journals.
I'll re-read the story, but I don't remember a con being part of it.
If anything, it was a very difficult, roundabout way for him to pay tribute to an unknown photographer's work. Yes, there are embellishments and flights of fancy, but these make for a good story.
There was the person of Shimmel Zohar, and the persona as well, the latter being a creation of Berkman's, which was entirely respectful, if not entirely accurate.

Hi Ari,

Thanks for sharing the link. I thought the work of Berkman was fabulous, as was the writing of Weschler. As you say, it seems not hoax or fake but more a tribute to an unknown photographer, Zohar (or was it a tribute to early Jewish philosophy, The Zohar, and its possible author, Moses de Leon.

Such an intriguing account with many just on time deaths, and so much left unsaid. As Wescher writes at the end.

So that’s all I’ve got—and yes, I realize that it doesn’t entirely hang together. Sometimes things are like that, and what are you going to do?


Sandy

paulbarden
12-Sep-2020, 10:03
Paul, the perpetrator presented the work as that of an historical figure, not as his own.

That is not at all how I interpreted it. It seemed obvious to me what was going on there.

Dan Fromm
12-Sep-2020, 10:48
That is not at all how I interpreted it. It seemed obvious to me what was going on there.

You read selectively. From the first paragraph of the story:


the inaugural exhibition of a recently discovered trove of work by Shimmel Zohar, a Lithuanian immigrant photographer (and contemporary of Mathew Brady), who had done for the Jewish community of Manhattan’s Lower East Side what, generations later, August Sander would do for Weimar-era Berlin: create a complete photographic inventory of professions and types.

Mark Sawyer
12-Sep-2020, 11:41
This reminds me of when I watched the "Game of Thrones" series in its entirety. Know what I found out later? THE WHOLE THING WAS FAKE! It never even happened! Just a bunch of professional actors pretending to be someone else. What a hoax... :mad::mad::mad:

Dan Fromm
12-Sep-2020, 11:44
Yeah, Mark, fiction presented as fiction, not fiction presented as fact.

Mark Sawyer
12-Sep-2020, 12:01
Yeah, Mark, fiction presented as fiction, not fiction presented as fact.

What a cynic. Next you'll be denying the existence of fairies...

Dan Fromm
12-Sep-2020, 12:06
What a cynic. Next you'll be denying the existence of fairies...

I'd love to be introduced to one.

sanking
12-Sep-2020, 12:39
You read selectively. From the first paragraph of the story:

There will be no justice in the Court of Fromm. The judge quotes part of a paragraph that suggests guilt, but omits a following sentence that suggests otherwise.

"Or maybe not. There was, she suggested, some slippage in the whole backstory, and they were trying to find someone who might be willing to look into the matter, perhaps even for an afterword to the show’s catalog, which was on the verge of publication. Might I, she wondered, be interested?"

Judicial malpractice?

Sandy

Tin Can
12-Sep-2020, 12:41
Mark photographs fairies




I'd love to be introduced to one.

Dan Fromm
12-Sep-2020, 12:53
The interesting thing is that the Contemporary Jewish Museum presented Berkman's work honestly:


Los Angeles-based artist Stephen Berkman’s immersive photography installation is a tribute to Shimmel Zohar, a mythical nineteenth-century Jewish immigrant photographer, founder of Zohar Studios. The exhibition includes over thirty photographs, several large installations, a cabinet of curiosities, and a large format artist book about the Zohar project. These uncanny photographs take the visual codes of nineteenth-century portraiture as their point of departure, and the images and objects address both Jewish life and the scientific state of understanding over one hundred years ago. Together, they create an idiosyncratic vision of Victorian life in the United States, revitalizing bygone technologies and themes within a twenty-first century context. Through his work, Berkman shows that history is malleable and contains a multiplicity of meanings.

As for photographing fairies, I take it that Mark channels Elsie Wright and Frances Griffiths.

Ari
12-Sep-2020, 16:58
The interesting thing is that the Contemporary Jewish Museum presented Berkman's work honestly:

And Mr Weschler's job is to boost readership of a non-news story by any means necessary.
Lucky for him, he had such rich subject matter to start with.

Mark Sawyer
12-Sep-2020, 17:34
As for photographing fairies, I take it that Mark channels Elsie Wright and Frances Griffiths.

Best photographers ever! And even Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, author of the Sherlock Holmes mysteries, pronounced their fairy photographs as authentic, so they must be real!