This year marks the centennial of the birth of Irving Penn (1917-2009), a photographer perhaps best known for his work with Vogue. The Metropolitan Museum of Art is celebrating with a retrospective of his career, not only of his work in high fashion, but of his broad interests, from indigenous cultures to sometimes unusual still-lifes.

Penn was from a Jewish family (his brother, director Arthur Penn, also had an artistic eye), and Menachem Wecker once argued in The Forward that a “Jewish humor” pervades his photographs, the way he abstracted detritus of Manhattan streets into high art. But as this exhibit shows, he also held a respect everything, “high” or “low,” on which he cast his eye, and his camera lens. (Is this Jewish, too? Well, what isn’t?)

Every subject of his photo looks like they’re the most important person in the world, whether they’re a celebrity, a supermodel, or a Peruvian laborer. Even the closeup of a discarded cigarette butt (and there are several) becomes riveting.

And so, at this exhibit there’s something for everyone. Do you want to see some of Vogue’s chicest looks, high fashion over the course of decades (he worked with the magazine for a staggering six)? Or do you want to see images of celebrities, both pop culture stars and intelligentsia, from Marlene Dietrich to Ruth Bader Ginsburg, (RBG looking fly, as always). There’s even a room of nude studies, and after decades of photographing nearly identical body types for fashion, Penn was able to indulge a fascination with human shapes you’d pass on the street, once again with respect, attention to detail, drawing the viewer’s eye to what seems to be ordinary in a new way.

For someone who made a name for himself in the most mainstream, high-class photography-oriented magazine of its day, Penn, with Jewish humor or not, was awfully prone to bring the same celebration of culture and design to workers, people in indigenous societies worldwide, even images of fruit. Regardless of the subject, or from when in his long career a photograph dates, each of them is a unique joy to see.

Irving Penn: Centennial runs at the Metropolitan Museum of Art through July 30, 2017.

Photo by Irving Penn via the Met.

The post Irving Penn at the Met appeared first on Jewcy.

In it’s heyday, the Borscht Belt was a prosperous Jewish resort hideaway filled with hundreds of lively bungalow colonies and hotels. 32-year-old photographer Marisa Scheinfeld grew up among its windy tree-lined roads and empty storefronts; an area replete with magnificent history and looming potential that crumbled along with its tourist economy in the 1970s.

Scheinfeld set out to capture the rich decay and growth of the Catskills in her poignant photo series, ‘Ruins of the Borscht Belt.’ The photographic series, an outgrowth of the artist’s tie to her hometown and fascination with its layered Jewish background, paints the story of an inimitable, iconic area, whose many hotels and landmarks have been reclaimed by the organic forces of nature.

Some of the photos you’ll see below have been published widely throughout the Internet and on her website, although she was nice enough (sister perks) to share a few new ones from the second phase of her project. She’s shifted from focusing on the residual foundations of Catskills resorts, to the comedians, the chefs, the dancers; the people whose personalities helped define the Jewish summer refuge. Marisa plans to publish a book of this series in 2014.

(Guest Room, Grossinger’s Catskill Resort and Hotel, Liberty, NY)

Mal Z. Lawrence (Comedian), Monticello, NY

Indoor Pool, Grossinger’s Catskill Resort and Hotel, Liberty, NY

Leon Gottesman (former cook at at the Concord Hotel in Kiamesha Lake, NY), Sackett Lake, NY

Although these pictures primarily focus on the past life of the Catskills, the area as it currently stands is in the midst of a revitalization, due to an outpour of interest from hotel developers, casinos, and city folk craving country air and close proximity to New York City.

In August The New York Times featured a piece on the rise of city residents renting summer bungalow colony homes throughout the ‘Jewish Alps.’ This November, news also broke of a proposal authorizing the state as many as four full-scale casinos throughout the region. The State Gaming Commission and its to-be-appointed New York State Gaming Facility Location Board will be announced by Governor Cuomo in the new year.

Kutsher’s Country Club, the last of the standing Borscht Belt hotels, was sold this November to Veria Lifestyle, a company devoted to healthy living, whose developers plan to turn the resort and its properties into a “$90 million Nature Cure Lifestyle Management Center.” Basically, everything from yoga, to golf, to biodynamic restaurants.

Amy Goodstein, 37-year-old Catskill native and owner of Catskill Valley Homes elaborates on the area’s surge in real estate:

“We are having our best year in a long time, and it’s mostly from people buying second homes. I think its the sign of a few things; its an easy place to get to, the Catskills is beautiful, and we were always set up for this. It’s not like we’re (Catskills residents) reinventing the wheel, it’s just that everything is now coming full circle and people are re-discovering its glory.”

Bethel Woods Center for the Arts, a performing arts center and museum located at the site of the 1969 Woodstock festival, has brought renewed prosperity and a growing business community in Bethel N.Y. The sloping lawn and massive pavilion have housed big names such as Sting, Bob Dylan, and Santana, and this Memorial Day weekend, will hold a huge European-based electronic music festival, Mysteryland.

The Resnick Group of Rock Hill, NY have opened various restaurants throughout the area along with a luxury boutique hotel, The Sullivan. Their latest venture is, Brew, an artisanal coffee and beer shop set to open this summer with local craft beers and a tasting bar.

As nature continues to reclaim the remainder of what was, the Catskills persists as the underdog, radiating more splendor and potential than ever.

The post The Catskills Flourish Among the Ruins appeared first on Jewcy.