CRISTINA'S HISTORY
(2003–2007)

Gelatin silver prints of varying sizes. Edition of 5.

Cristina's History traces the multi-generational migration story of a branch of my family from Poland to Portugal to the west African nation of Guinea Bissau.

Starting with a small town in Poland transformed by industrialization during my great grandfather Isuchaar's lifetime, moving on to the fading romanticism of the Portuguese colonial area as witnessed by my great grandfather's eldest son Samuel, and continuing into the hopes and ultimate disappointments of the post colonial period in Guinea Bissau as lived by Samuel's daughter Clara, this project embodies modernity's condition of multiplicity, wandering, and exile. It also offers an alternative modern Jewish migration story, one not centered on Zionism.

The work is presented as three series of photographs taken in Zgierz, Poland, 2005, Lisbon, Portugal 2004, and Guinea Bissau, 2003. Accompanying each series is a text situating the lives of Isuchaar, Samual, and Clara within the span of the 20th century—industrialization, the Holocaust, the end of colonialism, and the post-colonial period.

Produced and first exhibited by Le Point du Jour, Cherbourg, France (2009), Cristina's History was subsequently exhibited at the Berardo Foundation, Lisbon (2009), and at the Museum of Jewish Art and History in Paris (2010). A special presentation was also made at the Portuguese Cultural Center in Bissau in 2011.

The catalog includes essays by Jean Francois Chevrier, art historian and independent curator, Jonathan Boyarin, professor of modern Jewish studies, and Carlos Schwarz Da Silva, Clara's son and my cousin in Guinea Bissau, Director of the NGO Action for Development. Texts in French, English, and Portuguese.

Site of my great grandfather's house. Zgierz, Poland. 2005

Narutowicza Street. Zgierz, Poland. 2005. Zgierz, Poland. 2005

Clara's desk. Oeiras, Portugal. 2004

A page of Samuel's manuscript on the Marrano's. 2004

Old Town. Bissau, Guinea-Bissau. 2003

Downtown Bissau. Guinea-Bissau, 2003