This exhibition is one of the projects by the photographer-artist Galina Zernina, developed together with Mikhail Epshtein. The project "On the same wave" is a continuation of the photography exhibition |Yearning for a better life" (based on "Letters to Eretz Israel" by Janucz Korczak) that was held during 2015-2016 in Munich, Sait Petersburg and Berlin (www.yearning.ru). 

The next project is already in the making, and will be dedicated to the life, writings and pictures by Naomi Frankel, a famous Israeli artist born in Berlin.

What does unite these exhibitions?

Each of the exhibitions is a meeting point for the visitors with an important individual well known worldwide, complex and ambiguous.

J. Korczak, J. Brodsky, N. Frankel are authors of well-known books, texts, many of which are included in school programs and researched at universities. However, the authors often remain not widely known amongst people, including the ones in the countries where they themselves were born.

In one way or another all three individuals were connected to Palestine, nowadays Israel. Janucz Korczak has visited the country twice and pondered about moving to Eretz-Israel right before the start of World War Two. Joseph Brodsky was sent to Israel by the Soviet authorities, but ended up residing and working in other countries. Naomi Frankel fled Berlin after the rise of Hitler, came to Israel in 1934, and has been one of the people who built Israel and fought for the country.

All of them were or were about to become emigrants, they had the experience of living "between two cultures," were heirs and bearers of several cultural traditions simultaneously, wich they had both from birth and where they had lived.

Although all were born in Jewish families, each had relation with Judaism in their own way. Janucz Korczak considered himself first and foremost a Polish, Warsaw man, and only after that- a Jew. Joseph Brodsky thought of himself as a “citizen of the world”, who was born into a Jewish family. While Naomi Frenkel has considered herself a Jewish woman first, and an Israeli citizen second. All her life, Frenkel tried to understand what being Jewish meant.

The project organizers’ have not goal to tell the visitors about the life and work of the individuals mentioned above (however, for many visitors this acquaintance also occurs). Exhibitions are an invitation to joint reflection, based on texts and images created by writers, through the prism of Galina Zernina's photographs. This is an invitation to correlate what we see with our own ideas, thoughts, experiences, with our experience of being "between two cultures."

 During the exhibition “On the same wave” (as was the case with the exhibition “Yearning for a better life” ) master-classes for students and adults as well as other events will be held.

 

Authors of the exhibitions concept:

Galina Zernina, a Russian language and literature teacher and a photo-artist from Saint Petersburg, Russia. In 2013 has moved to Israel.

Mikhail Epshtein, the head of the “Janusz Korczak Institute”, Saint Petersburg, associate professor of City University of New York

 

The project was supported by:

The European Janusz Korczak Academy (Germany)

Saint-Petersburg Jewish community center YESOD (Russia)