Arts & Entertainment
Camera Artist
Chilean-born Rafael Goldchain makes a statement with his photographic portraits.
Left: Rafael Goldchain: The General's
Wife (Tegucigalpa, Honduras), 1987,
color photograph, edition 9/10; Gift of
the artist, 2002.
Middle: Rafael Goldchain: Self-Portrait
as Dofia Balbina Baumfeld Szpiegel
de Rubinstein b. Ostrowiec, Poland,
1903/d. Santiago de Chile, 1964; 1999,
digitally altered self-portrait from the
installation Familial Ground, in which
the photographer portrays himself as
his ancestors. It will be on view this
fall at the Jewish Community Library
in San Francisco.
Right: Camera artist Rafael Goldchain:
"A lot of my family was exterminated,
and I'm drawn to their history in a pro-
, found way."
Suzanne Chessler
Special to the Jewish News
R
afael Goldchain did not know
his 1980s photos of Latin
America were on view at the Art
Gallery of Windsor until he came across
an announcement on the Internet.
The camera artist, whose images origi-
nally had been displayed at the gallery
in a solo show, is curious about their
Those Were
The Days
West Bloomfield artist
recalls a pleasant childhood
in Detroit.
D
eborah Friedman, a lifelong
artist, believes the inspira-
tion for her latest series,
"Claudene," came from watching the
painting experiences of her 10-year-old
granddaughter, Ariel Fink.
Friedman recalled her own childhood
activities growing up in Detroit and
filtered them into 15 images completed
using oils on wood. Abstracted houses
and hand-drawn letters merge into
messages from disappeared days.
Friedman, wanting the series to be
40
July 19
9
2007
impact now that they are linked with
the pictures of two other contemporary
Canadians.
The exhibit, "Social Works: Goldchain,
Pietropaolo, Towell," runs through Aug.
19 and is explored with a curator-led
tour 7-10 p.m. Friday, July 27. The photos
were chosen to show challenges faced by
diverse people.
Vincenzo Pietropaolo is represented
by pictures of migrant farm work-
shown in the city
to which the paint-
ings are connected,
approached the
Bagley Housing Art
Gallery and suc-
ceeded in arrang-
ing a show running
July 21-Sept. 1. The
opening reception
Deborah Friedman:
is set for 5-8 p.m.
Candy Houses.
Saturday, July 28.
"I borrowed a painting style from
childhood, but I'm doing more than
reminiscing," says Friedman, who
works in a studio above her West
Bloomfield garage. "I'm presenting
a commentary about how children
enter their own world and escape the
upheaval around them."
Friedman, who titled the series with
the name of a playmate from her past,
includes a Jewish star on the house
representing her own in Orange Candy
ers in Ontario, while Larry Towell's
work includes scenes from the Israeli-
Palestinian conflict sympathetic to the
Palestinians.
"My part of the exhibit consists of
unmanipulated color photos shot on
film," says Goldchain, 53, who donated
the pictures to the gallery in 2002, after
they toured Canada, the United States
and Latin America.
"I was very involved in human rights
Houses. With Judaism
an important part of
her childhood, she still
remembers perform-
ing Christmas songs in
school and calls atten-
tion to that in the piece
named Snow.
"I was searching for
Orange
a time in the city when
we didn't have all of
the issues that we are facing today,
and I decided it was the make-believe
playtime of childhood," says Friedman,
who graduated from Detroit's Cass
Technical High School and earned
bachelor's and master's degrees in art
from Wayne State University.
"I am sure there was a world around
us, but I am also sure I was very
unaware of it. With all its imperfec-
tions, we built a world that suited us."
Friedman, who moved out of the city
in the late 1960s, has showcased other
work through a loose association with an
amnesty group and was interested in the
politics of Mexico and Central America.
I attended many of the political events
at a time when the region was very vola-
tile, and my photographs touch on those
experiences."
One image, The General's Wife, was
taken at a rally in Honduras, where the
subject's husband was being sworn in
as chief of the country's armed forces.
paintings in many exhibits, reach-
ing from the Janice Charach Epstein
Gallery in the West Bloomfield Jewish
Community Center to Central Missouri
State University. This is the first time
she included lettering amid the forms
but does not know why.
Although the "Claudene" paintings
offer many colors, they are not bright.
"Any sad tone has to do with the
fact that those times are gone," says
Friedman, whose projects are dis-
played in hospitals, corporations and
private homes. "The times themselves
were filled with a lot of joy."
- Suzanne Chessler
"Claudene" will be on display July
21-Sept. 1 at the Bagley Housing
Art Gallery, 2715 Bagley, in Detroit.
Gallery hours are 9 a.m.-5 p.m.
Mondays-Fridays and 1-5 p.m.
Saturdays. (313) 964-5942.