Gay Block began her career as a portrait photographer in 1973 with portraits of her own wealthy Jewish community in Houston. Starting from this starting point her projects followed the two branches of her family throughout the Camp Girl, and the Jewish community of South Miami Beach.
The photographs of Gay Block are included in museums and private collections throughout the United States,(MFA Houston, MoMA, SFMOMA and the Center for Creative Photography, Tucson). In 1992 her “Rescuers: Portraits of Moral Courage in the Holocaust” was a major historical element of the Holocaust. It presents photographic portraits, archives and interviews. This was the photographer’s first book (and first exhibition).
All of his portraits are in fact visual testimonies of those who fought against the Holocaust. Based on the way they tell their life stories, the photographer ” pictures ” them as she did with her book and her short film about her mother, “Bertha Alyce”, which won numerous awards in about twenty-five film festivals.
This new book is a complete remake of her earlier work with a new preface by American Jewish art scholar Samantha Baskind. Gay Block has traveled from eight countries in three years with the rabbi and author Malka Drucker. This book documents the courageous stories – and more – of those who risked their lives to save, in some cases, thousands of Jewish victims of the Holocaust and who went into resistance, braving the threat of death and torture.
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