Past Exhibits
Featuring the photography of B.A. Van Sise
Presented in honor of Jack Waksal
In a project that would span four years and take him across the country, B.A. Van Sise set out to document the lives of Holocaust survivors in the United States. Invited to Life: Holocaust Survivors in America features the photographic portraits that he created. Van Sise’s work offers fresh opportunities to engage with the unique stories of survivors who built new lives in the U.S. The photographs also reveal the wide diversity of American Jewish experience and the many ways in which individuals and communities have practiced resilience, remembrance, creativity, and connection.
B.A. Van Sise is an author and photographic artist focused on the intersection between language and the visual image. His work has been featured in solo exhibitions at the Center for Creative Photography and the Museum of Jewish Heritage – A Living Memorial to the Holocaust, as well as in group exhibitions at the Peabody Essex Museum, the Museum of Photographic Arts, the Los Angeles Center of Photography, and the Whitney Museum of American Art. A number of his portraits of American poets are in the permanent collection of the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery. Van Sise is an Independent Book Publisher Awards gold medalist, and his Invited to Life exhibition is a 2021 Prix de la Photographie Paris award-winner. Invited to Life, the book, is forthcoming in September 2022.
This presentation of Invited to Life is made possible by the Samuel D. Waksal Foundation, with the generous support of the David Berg Foundation and the Stefany and Simon Bergson Foundation. The exhibition is presented by the Center for Jewish History and jMUSE.
This exhibit closed on
Friday, September 2, 2022