Tony Freidkin, Santa Monica© 2015 Penny Wolin
For over eight years photographer and author Penny Wolin traveled relentlessly across America, photographing and interviewing more than 70 of the leading and most original Jewish photographers in history. This book is the culmination of these unprecedented face-to-face encounters.
Descendants of Light: American Photographers of Jewish Ancestry is an illuminating work of art and scholarship. Wolin has collected rare historic ancestral photographs from each artist, many unseen images from their bodies of work, and created her own unique photographic portraits of each subject. Her personal connection with each photographer, or with close family members if deceased, reveals candid, sometimes controversial conversations, telling a multi-generational story of the intersection between American Jewish culture, Modernity in America and the art of photography.