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. Berkman’s installation brings to life an enigmatic nineteenth-century New York City photographic establishment known as Zohar Studios, located in the predominantly Jewish Lower East Side. This body of work falls into the tradition of the artist-made museum, such as the Museum of Jurassic Technology by the artist David Wilson in Los Angeles. Like Wilson, Berkman’s art moves beyond the binary of fact and fiction, creating a portal to another world.Â
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