Three professors at the University of 麻豆果冻传媒 at Lafayette and the curator of the Hilliard University Art Museum will discuss Soviet photojournalists and the Holocaust next week.
The group will focus on the historical context of images included in an exhibit entitled 鈥淭hrough Soviet Jewish Eyes: Photography, War, and the Holocaust,鈥 which opened at the museum on Sept. 20.
鈥淚n the wake of controversial news stories involving Russia and the concern for journalists covering war and terrorism, this exhibition and conversation are particularly relevant,鈥 said Lee Gray, museum curator.
The panel discussion will be held from 6-8 p.m. on Thursday, Oct. 16, at the Paul and Lulu Hilliard University Art Museum at 710 E. St. Mary Blvd. It鈥檚 free and open to the public.
Dr. Chester Rzadkiewicz, an assistant professor of history; Lynda Frese, a BORSF endowed professor of art; Dr. Richard Frankel, an associate professor of history; and Gray will participate.
The exhibit features more than 60 arresting war images of Soviet photojournalists, including Evgenii Khaldei, Georgii Zelma, and Dmitrii Baltermants, who were the first to document the liberation of prisoners from Nazi concentration camps during World War II. The majority of the photojournalists were Jewish, from mid-sized towns in southern Russia, who had taken up photography when it was a new, risky, and entrepreneurial profession.
The discussion will touch on the work of the photographers, which merged the social and political purpose of documentary photography with the aesthetic sensibilities of Modernism. The result was images that lend a Jewish Soviet perspective to the World War II narrative.
The talk also will address photojournalism as a form of artistic expression, and examine its role in the documentation of the atrocities of war.
鈥淭hrough Soviet Jewish Eyes: Photography, War, and the Holocaust,鈥 will be on view through Dec. 13.
The Hilliard University Art Museum features 11,000 square feet of gallery space and is the largest exhibition space between Houston and New Orleans. It houses a collection of 18th through 21st-century European, Asian and American art. In addition to its permanent collection, it offers changing exhibitions of regional, national and international art.
To learn more, visit hilliardmuseum.org or call (337) 482-2278.