A Note from the Photographer and Creator

After hundreds of conversations and hours spent listening to what students at Tulane care about, one thing became glaringly clear: there is no single story about what it means to be Jewish despite what we might have learned growing up. As an artist and a photographer, I had to do something with this realization. I began using photography to create the Portrait Identity Project as a way for students to see a part of themselves in others’ stories, to instigate radical perspective shifts about what being Jewish “looks like,” and to encourage viewers to embrace the fact that identity is multifaceted. Exploring intersectional Jewish identities in more depth created the space for students to process the full range of their experiences with Judaism, allowed them to dig deep into their own personal beliefs and values, and showed viewers about the many different ways to be Jewish.

This project serves as a platform to share, discover, and document individual stories, but is limited to the people I had the privilege to interview and photograph. This body of work is ongoing and by no means a complete representation of all people who embrace “Jewish” as a part of their identity.

As you look, listen, and learn from these amazing stories, I hope that you embrace the idea shared by Virginia Woolf, that, “One is not tethered to a single mind, but can put on briefly for a few minutes the bodies and minds of others.”

Behind each of these portraits is an amazing human and their story and the team that helped me bring this project to life.