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that allows me to do that."
Ruben credits French photography
curator Jean-Claude Lemagny with
discovering her work in the 1980s and
opening her photos to a flood of inter-
national shows and publications. She
credits an Israeli friend for accompa-
nying her to a site that would lead to
religious experience.
Ruben, who had been an art teacher
in the Detroit Public Schools after
earning a master's degree at Wayne
State University, began conducting
photography workshops in the 1980s,
many in Israel. Her work has become
part of museum collections in Israel
and she has established a scholarship
program there for emerging artists.
"I had always been curious about
what a Jew is and my Jewishness," says
Ruben, whose early connection with
religion came in bits through her
attorney father, Harry Winston, and
programs she attended at the Jewish
Community Center in Detroit.
"In the mid-1980s, I was traveling
with my friend through Eastern Europe,
and we stopped at the Prague cemetery.
Something amazing happened to me,
and I spent day after day sitting there.
"It was in the summer, and it was
cloudy. The trees were covering the
cemetery, and their shadows were darting
around from one tombstone to another,
creating what I always created as a child
— faces. When I was young, I saw faces
in the clouds and treetops, and then I
was seeing faces on the tombstones.
"I photographed the shadows in .
Prague, and when I looked at the neg-
atives and the prints, I saw the
same faces. I called my friend
from Israel, and she said I was
making photographs of the
people I imagined.
"It was a spiritual experience
for me, revealing certain centers
of energy I never knew I had. It
refers to the forgotten and
destroyed, so it brings all that
back to life . mod has given me the
opportunity to rise up to a con-
sciousness of my Jewishness that
I never knew I had.
"I don't believe in art as thera-
py, but this certainly was a con-
structive addition to my life."
The part of the exhibit devot-
ed to the cemetery is an interac-
tive installation, which only has
been seen at Rutgers and Lehigh uni-
versities. Visitors can leaf through
images and hear sounds in a quiet
room for recollection and meditation.
Seeing her entire retrospective at her
alma mater has opened the award-win-
ning Ruben to much nostalgia. She
now lives and works in Princeton, N.J.,
surrounded by beautiful gardens — the
retirement projects of her husband,
Herbert, who worked at Merrill Lynch.
"It's almost as if 50 years have disap-
peared," says Ruben, who also is show-
ing black and white photos of Rodin
sculptures and landscapes from south-
ern France June 2-July 31 at the
Halsted Gallery in Birmingham. She
will be there to sign copies of her
book, In Human Touch, on June 23.
"Michigan always will be home for
me, and I will always be a Midwestern
girl," says the artist, also the daughter of
Lydia (Kahn) Winston. "I was surround-
ed by music and art in a very happy way
as a child. Art in our family is about as
important as sleeping every evening.
"Family experiences included rear-
ranging the walls of my parents' collec-
tions on Saturday mornings, talking -
with some of the visiting dignitaries
who came to our home and listening to
the Saturday afternoon [radio] operas
with my grandfather, Albert Kahn.
"I attended many Detroit
Symphony Orchestra concerts with
my grandparents and sat in their box.
I also remember how my father's
Hungarian, poker-playing friends from
the Detroit Symphony played their
fiddles in our home."
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