Bill Aron

Website: www.billaron.com
Residence : Los Angeles, CA

Biographical information
Bill Aron has gained international recognition for his photographs of Jewish communities around the world. Since 1989, he has been collaborating with The Museum of the Southern Jewish Experience, in Mississippi, on a project depicting Jewish life in the "Deep South." A volume of this work entitled SHALOM Y'ALL: IMAGES OF JEWISH LIFE IN THE AMERICAN SOUTH with an introduction by Alfred Uhry, has recently been published by Algonquin Books. His first book, which chronicles the Jewish communities of the former Soviet Union, Cuba, Jerusalem, New York and Los Angeles, is entitled FROM THE CORNERS OF THE EARTH and was published, with an introduction by Chaim Potok, by The Jewish Publication Society.

Bill's photographs have been exhibited in major museums and galleries throughout the United States, Europe and Israel. His work has also appeared in a wide variety of publications and is found in numerous public and private collections, including the Museum of Modern Art, The International Center for Photography, The Jewish Museum, The Chicago Art Institute, The Boston Museum of Fine Arts, The Skirball Museum, The Museum of American Jewish History, The Israel Museum in Jerusalem, and the Museum of the Diaspora in Tel-Aviv.

Bill lives in Los Angeles with his wife and two sons, where he is undoubtedly the only free lance photographer with a Ph.D. in sociology.

Discussion topics

All the following are presented with slides or power point. Aron shows images of his photography and discusses his experiences while shooting and traveling. He also discusses the subjects' point of view, often quoting them for emphasis.

• Shalom Y'all: Jewish Life in the Deep South-"When people ask me what the Southern Jewish community is like, I say it's one big extended family."
  --Mark Perler, Tupelo, Mississippi.
  From Levy, Arkansas to Kaplan, Louisiana, Southern Jewish culture is alive and well below the Mason-Dixon line. In SHALOM Y'ALL, award-winning photographer Bill Aron provides a vibrant portrait of contemporary, southern Jewish life, with images, stories of his experiences while photographing, and quotes from his subjects about what it is like to be a Jew in the South today. He presents the heroic, funny, and sometimes tragic experiences of a people who have long settled in the Bible Belt.
• The Lower East Side: Portal of Immigration--The Lower East Side of New York City is an important landmark in the life of the American Jew. It was, in its time, the source of a variety of Jewish cultural institutions: yeshivot, synagogues, Yiddish newspapers and theaters, as well as the restaurants and coffee houses depicted in the stories of Isaac Bashevis Singer. It was one of the principle areas of settlement for Jews as they immigrated to this country. By the turn of this century, it contained the largest Jewish community in the world. In the introduction to Bill Aron's book, FROM THE CORNERS OF THE EARTH, Chaim Potok writes:

  A visionary with a camera, a recorder of the glimmers of light and shade ... Aron uses his feelings to search for that obscured hidden life. To experience the fruit of Bill Aron's lens is to sense both the link to the divine and the infinite loneliness that constitute the essence of man.

• From New York to Mississippi: Two Portals of Immigration-A combination of the two lectures just described.
  From the bustling shops and synagogues of New York's Lower East Side to the dwindling yet vibrant Jewish community in Jackson, Mississippi, from the familiar to the strange, Bill Aron's photographs bring into vivid focus the complex human dimensions of contemporary American Judaism. In each instance, Aron's camera captures the inner meaning as well as the outer form. His images speak as much to the spirit as to the eye.
• By Spirit Alone: The Jewish Community of the Former Soviet Union and their Struggle to Immigrate to Israel--In the fall of 1981, Aron visited three cities in the Soviet Union: Leningrad, Minsk and Moscow. His encounter with Jews there overwhelmed him with feelings: admiration, helplessness, anger and compassion. He kept thinking that had his own father not emigrated when he did, he could be a Jew in the Soviet Union today. Aron wanted, therefore, to tell the story of the Jews with whom he met. As a photographer, he tells this story with his camera.

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