Gay Block (born 1942) - Rescuers of the Holocaust: Portraits by Gay Block - 1988

Series 'Rescuers of the Holocaust'

Arnold Douwes, The Netherlands, 1988

Museum of Fine Arts, Houston

print 1992

Gelatin silver print

Shot 1988

The photo is dated: AUG - 9 1992

Measures - 25.5 cm x 20.2 cm

More annotation and museum label on reverse

Very good condition with little sign of the age - see photos for details.

Rescuers of the Holocaust

In 1986, Rabbi Harold Schulweis, author Malka Drucker and Gay Block decided to document activities of non-Jewish Europeans who risked torture and death to save Jews during the Holocaust, a topic they considered both important and under-publicized. Their work would eventually led to a book (Rescuers: Portraits of Moral Courage in the Holocaust), as well as an exhibition of Block's, named Gay Block: Rescuers of the Holocaust travelled to numerous museums, including the Museum of Modern Art, New York, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX, University of New Mexico Art Museum, Albuquerque, NM, Houston Center for Photography, Houston, TX.

Biography

Gay Block (born 1942) is a fine art portrait photographer, who was born in Houston, Texas. Her work has been published in books, and is collected by the Museum of Modern Art, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, the El Paso Museum of Art, the Jewish Museum (Manhattan) and the New Mexico Museum of Art.

By the 1970s she began taking pictures of members of her own affluent Jewish community in Houston. She later photographed an older Jewish community of retirees in South Miami Beach, many of whom were Holocaust survivors. Block also photographed girls at summer camp. In 2006, Block re-photographed women who were the girls in her 1981 series from Camp Pinecliffe, twenty-five years earlier.