Capturing the lives of ordinary Jews in photographs

From Lower East Side scribes to refuseniks in Minsk to the New Orleans jazz buffs of Preservation Hall, Bill Aron made a career out of photographing ordinary Jews in the fullness of their humanity.

For Bill Aron, every picture is a study in liveliness and colloquial warmth, and he has deployed this warmth to capture Jewish life over the past 50 years. As he tells it, the decisive moment of taking a picture is the end point of a much larger journey. “I’ve often thought that photography is so much more than the moment when you press the shutter,” he told the Center for Jewish History, which is currently hosting a career-spanning retrospective of his work. “Doubtless it is an important moment, when you press the shutter, but I thought that moment really represents how I feel about what’s going on. It also represents a history.”

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/arts-letters/articles/jews-on-film-bill-aron