About my work

In 1987, I guest-curated an exhibition, Captive in a Dream, for the Israel Museum.

Review :

"The exhibition is about Jerusalem before and after the Six-Day War when the city's two parts, divided for 19 years, were physically reunited once again. Captive in a Dream is a spell-binding exhibition. Walking around it is almost dizzying as one feels close to the very pivot of history. In this exhibition a subsidiary pleasure is to watch people reacting to these photographs: they are visibly moved, amused, provoked, saddened, excited. "Looking at these photographs," says Silver, "one is surely moved to think: we have to find a way to live together in this beautiful city." (Aloma Halter, Israel Scene, December 1987.)"

Review :

"Vivienne Silver, curator of the exhibition, has invested Himmelreich with a double blessing - she has rescued him from obscurity, and exhibited him by displaying one subject - his dance photographs. The result: a tight and compact exhibition, rich in subject matter but not overloaded. Thanks to Silver's choice, Himmelreich suddenly emerges in one's awareness with work that is still relevant." (Ruthi Rubin, Chadashot, 1988.)

In 1989, the Silver Print Gallery, then still in Jerusalem, exhibited The Lure of Petra, Gymnasia Herzliya goes to Petra, 1929, photographs by Avraham Soskin, together with Neil Folberg's colour photographs from his book, In a Desert Land.

In 1990, Then and Now, Forty Years of Photo Journalism in Israel was guest-curated for Vision Gallery, then still in San Francisco (and now in Jerusalem).

Review:

" Vivienne Silver, of the Silver Print Gallery in Jerusalem, curated the exhibit. She has gone beyond the headlines and household names to present something of much greater value." (Michael Fox, Northern California Jewish Bulletin, 23.3.1990.)

The gallery was kept open but not advertised during most of the 1990s, while I was working on my book. Documentors of the Dream, Pioneer Jewish Photographers in the Land of Israel 1890-1933 was published in 1998 by the Magnes Press of the Hebrew University, Jerusalem and the Jewish Publication Society, Philadelphia (seen on recommended book lists on the internet).

From Mirror to Memory, One Hundred Years of Photography in the Land of Israel, 1900-2000, an exhibition to end the century was guest-curated for the Mane Katz Museum in Haifa, September 2000. A catalogue is available.

Reviews:

"The exhibition From Mirror to Memory is the third major historical overview to be mounted in the last few months celebrating a century of Israeli photography. This new and impressive version is curated by Vivienne Silver-Brody, a noted photo-historian and specialist in 20th century Holy Land photography whose latest publication, a book featuring pioneer Jewish photographers was critically acclaimed. In contrast to the Herzliya Museum's politically orientated exhibition and the Israel Museum's broad historical overview, Silver-Brody took as one of her main aims the exploration of the multifaceted identity of Israel's citizens. Part of the exhibition comprises a geniza (archive) of snapshot albums borrowed from private and public sources illustrating the lifestyle and rituals of local Christian and Moslem Arab, Circassian, Druse and Bedouin communities." (Angela Levine, Jerusalem Post, Oct. 2000.)

"From Mirror to Memory shows the place and not the time, ethnic groups, different peoples and religions. The exhibition, curated by Vivienne Silver-Brody, exposes a range of aesthetic-political-social-cultural aspects of photographic endeavour. The pluralism is not only connected to the question of who the photographers were, but also from the internal debate concerning what photography dealt with in the Land of Israel. The exhibition succeeds in constructing a continuity of different narratives concerning photography in the Land of Israel." (Gilad Melzer, Yediot Ahronoth, 24.11.2000.)

To start the new millennium I am taking a deep breath and am looking forward to showing a wide range of creative imagery in Israeli photography and to see these works enter collections internationally.