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June 30 • 2016 47 black background for striking effect. Robert Frank also did not want to be photographed but, after they found rapport in conversation, he agreed to have Wolin photograph his desk. As she was working, he walked right into the frame and she captured the moment. He was surprised, but agreed to let her use it. Her photo includes his desk, with rel- ics of his travels, framed photos, a magnifying glass, an unopened bottle of wine and half of him — his face in profile — at the edge. Several of the photographers have been shooting since they were very young. Peter Aaron, who got a Nikon F for his bar mitzvah, tells her, "Even though I don't associate with the religion, when I am in the company of Jews I feel like I am closer to home." Jason Eskenazi believes "there's something about Jews picking up cameras. Though I take pictures in the physical world, it's really about self-reflection; the inquiry of knowing oneself that Jews have made for so many millen- nia." Abe Frajndlich, who was born in a DP camp, credits all the years he spent moving from country to country, adapting to different languages and cul- tures, to enabling him now, as a photographer, to walk into any situation, encounter people "and immediately get into their fre- quency to win their trust." In some cases, the photog- raphers Wolin was interested in were deceased, and she met with family members of Walter Rosenblum, Nickolas Murray, Garry Winogrand and others. She also names other pho- tographers who, despite her persistence, chose not to par- ticipate, like Lee Friedlander, Sylvia Plachy and the families of Richard Avedon and Carl Mydans. And, understanding that there are so many leading "photographers of Jewish ances- try," whether photojournalists, fine artists, portraitists, fashion photographers or street photog- raphers, she includes a further list of names. In an interview in New York City, Wolin is careful about her terminology, speaking not of Jewish photographers, but photographers with Jewish backgrounds or ancestry. Many of her subjects were ambivalent about being identified as Jewish photographers as they weren't practicing Jews, didn't focus on Jewish subjects and weren't comfortable with any label. But as long as she steered clear of religion and the notion of "a Jewish eye," they were intrigued to participate. "For me the work is semi- autobiographical," she writes. "I am a Jewish photographer pho- tographing other photographers of Jewish ancestry. We all intently question and answer what we see before us. And one way or another, we continue to master our Jewish American identities as well as the continuing cultural and technological revolution of photography." Wolin doesn't think there's a particular Jewish vision in the work of these photographers, but she does believe that there's something in their collective his- tory of exile that motivates them and enables them to observe their surroundings deeply. "If we look like our ancestors," she asks, "might we act like them, too, with a certain muscle memory? How does that experience affect our abilities to be photographers, to live on the edge of a host cul- ture?" "It is not a coincidence," she writes, "that Jews are attracted to the alchemy of photography, and that photography has found its storytellers in Jews." She quotes the gallerist Howard Greenberg, whose eponymous New York gallery specializes in photography: "Photography has almost a genet- ic appeal to the Jewish mind, the universal Jewish culture." Wolin became interested in photography while growing up in Cheyenne, Wyo. She studied her family's subscription to Life mag- azine, and with the heightened sense of Jewish identity that often accompanies small-town Jewish life, she realized that many of the photographers she admired were Jewish. She went on to study photography in California and continued to notice how many people whose work she was fol- lowing were Jewish — and began thinking about the connections between Jewish roots and the skills involved in photography. In 1984, she began a proj- ect documenting 150 years of Jewish history in Wyoming, the "Cowboy State." She put together a photographic book and exhibi- tion, The Jews of Wyoming: Fringe of the Diaspora. Wolin, the recipient of grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities, has worked in commercial, editorial and documentary pho- tography. Her work is held in the Smithsonian Institution and museums around the country. She divides her time between the north and south of California, Wyoming and New York. Her self-portrait included here, shot at the Dead Sea, captures her vibrance. Descendants of Light: American Photographers of Jewish Ancestry is a large-format, handsomely designed book with photography that's beautiful and captivating; readers will enjoy lingering in these pages and in their ensuing questions. * OPPOSITE PAGE, LEFT: Wolin's first self-portrait, age 10, Cheyenne, Wyo. OPPOSITE PAGE, RIGHT: A photo of Henry Hollander's grandparents, circa 1925, with tefillin ABOVE, LEFT: A self-portrait of Wolin in the Dead Sea ABOVE, RIGHT: Photographer Ryszard Horowitz ended up alone at Auschwitz when he was 6. When the camp was liberated by the Red Army, a film crew came with them. "Later, my mother happened to see a newsreel of the liberation and saw me in it," he told Wolin. "She demanded that the projectionist give her some frames of the film. With this, she knew that I was alive and found me through an orphanage in Krakow. I happen to be lucky … many times in my life." The frames of that footage are included with Horowitz's portrait in Wolin's book.