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The exhibition of 45 images by photographer Ouriel Morgensztern, entitled “Rendezvous in Vienna” presenting the holidays and everyday life of Viennese Jews, opened in the second floor cloisters of the Méliusz Juhász Péter Library.
The opening of the exhibition, which was organised jointly by the Austrian Cultural Forum, the Institute of German Studies of the University of Debrecen and the Méliusz Library and is open free of charge until the 26th of October.
Morgensztern was born in Paris, spent his childhood in the South of France, later lived in a kibbutz in Israel, then in New York, and finally settled in Vienna in the mid-2000s. A part of his family came from the territory of today’s Belarus, Lithuania and Latvia, similar to Mark Rothko, considered the father of abstract expressionism. Morgensztern also dedicated a special series to Rothko’s memory in another project.
The artist first connected with the Jewish world through their parents’ photo album, which lacked pictures of their grandparents and great-grandparents as many of his ancestors were murdered during the Holocaust. He wanted to record situations in the lives of others, in this case members of the Viennese community, which would have been possible in his own family’s life if history had turned out differently.
At a private press conference following the opening, it was also revealed that Ouriel Morgensztern’s visual vision has been influenced in formative ways by Hungarian photographers such as André Kertész and Robert Capa. “Besides photography, film was a major influence, as my father was a film producer, and actually we grew up together at home with movies,” the artist added.
The exhibition, with a strong atmosphere, will move from Méliusz Library to the Jewish Quarter in Debrecen in early November, and from there to Budapest.
Date: until the 26th of October
Location: Méliusz Juhász Péter Library
Source:dehir.hu