For the past four years, Gillian Laub has worked in Israel and Palestine, producing portraits of the inhabitants of Jerusalem, Haifa, Tel Aviv, Ramallah, Nablus, and other locations in the region. Her first monograph, Testimony (Aperture, June 2007), contains fifty of her portraits of Israeli Jews, Israeli Arabs, displaced Lebanese families, and Palestinians?each personally affected by the geopolitical context in which they live, and each unveiling one more essential element in the puzzle of peace for the Middle East. In some of Laub?s photographs, the traces of conflict are immediately observable?teenage boys without limbs; a young woman enveloped in scar tissue and a burn-recovery suit. Others are seemingly free from the disfigurements of violence. Yet in the interviews that accompany each portrait, a common thread of survival is revealed. Resilience, pride, defiance, vulnerability?and most astonishing of all, optimism?emerge from one statement to the next. Author David Rieff has said of Laub?s work, ?To consider [these] images is to be reminded not just of human cruelty and human stupidity but also of human tenacity.
Aperture?a not-for-profit foundation dedicated to advancing photography in all its forms?was founded in 1952 by six gifted individuals: photographers Ansel Adams, Dorothea Lange, Barbara Morgan, and Minor White; historian Beaumont Newhall; and writer/curator Nancy Newhall. With scant resources, these visionary artists created a new periodical, Aperture magazine, to serve photographers and photography enthusiasts worldwide. As the medium flourished, so too did Aperture Foundation, expanding to include the subsequent publication of books (over four hundred to date); limited-edition photographs and portfolios; artist lectures and symposia; and a traveling exhibitions program that since its inception has presented over one hundred exhibitions at major museums and cultural institutions throughout the United States and abroad.
