ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, October 6, 1996 TAG: 9610040075
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 4 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: NEW YORK
SOURCE: VERENA DOBNIK ASSOCIATED PRESS
One night, French photographer Frederic Brenner dreamed he was in America with Lauren Bacall, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Ralph Lauren, Arthur Miller, Mark Spitz, Dr. Ruth Westheimer ...
Three years later, wide awake, Brenner peered at them through his camera lens as they stood bareheaded in the rain on Ellis Island, posing for him against the Manhattan skyline.
These prominent American Jews, all descended from immigrants who struggled in a new diaspora, are his ``Jewish icons,'' as the photographer says in his book ``Jews/America/A Representation.''
His rendezvous at the old gateway to the United States was part of Brenner's 17-year mission through 40 countries exploring the question: What does it mean to be a Jew at the end of the 20th century?
``There is no such thing as The Jew,'' concludes the 37-year-old photographer, who holds a Ph.D. in social anthropology. ``My photographs raise questions, they don't give answers.''
Many American Jews ``became icons by breaking the icons,'' or stereotypes, Brenner said during an interview at a SoHo art gallery in New York City where his photos are exhibited.
Barbra Streisand, for example. One of the 39 ``icons'' in the book, she ``has obviously reinvented beauty. She is not beautiful, and she became beautiful.''
To survive as a Jew is to be a chameleon, ``always taking the shape and the color of the country where we are. It is to reinvent oneself, while anchored in tradition,'' says Brenner.
``And it's a very thin line, you walk like an `equilibriste,''' he adds, using the French word for tightrope walker as he spreads his arms precariously.
For the Ellis Island photo, his famous subjects stood in a labyrinth he built of white-painted wood, ``the ultimate metaphor for diaspora, a place where the paths intersect, or merge sometimes, where the line is not straight, and there are many detours.''
In one square of the maze was Westheimer, the sex therapist whose finger-wagging advice, delivered in German-tinged English, has made her a television celebrity.
She landed in America in 1956, ``and I learned that you have to stand up and be counted,'' said the 4-foot-7-inch Westheimer, perched on a hidden box that raised her to camera level.
For Supreme Court Justice Ginsburg, the photo session was her first visit to the island where her Polish-born grandmother arrived in the early 1900s.
``Jewish people are sometimes called `the people of the book.' My grandparents' dream was for their children to become scholars,'' Ginsburg said.
The Supreme Court justice smiled when asked if she was an icon, saying she was just ``a fortunate girl born in Brooklyn.''
But there she was rubbing shoulders with the likes of business moguls Edgar Bronfman and his son, Edgar Jr.; violinists Itzhak Perlman and Isaac Stern; artist Roy Lichtenstein; composer Philip Glass; Olympic swimming champion Mark Spitz; feminist Betty Friedan; former CBS chairman Laurence Tisch; and former New York Mayor Ed Koch.
Holding her granddaughter's hand was another fortunate girl from Brooklyn, actress Lauren Bacall, born as Betty Joan Perske.
In two years of trekking through the country, Brenner also photographed Persian-born Jewish antique dealers in New Jersey, a Jewish family on Staten Island with a Christmas tree, students in a Hebrew day school in Las Vegas.
It's all part of his mammoth project, ``Chronicle of Exile,'' which he says will be ``the first visual anthology of the Jewish people in the 20th century.'' Publication is slated for 1999.
The quest began more than two decades ago, when he was a teen-ager in Paris mastering karate and Zen Buddhism, though his great-grandfather had been a rabbi and three-quarters of the family had been deported to Auschwitz.
``Then came the war of 1967 and the Yom Kippur war [involving Israel],'' he said. ``And my parents said, `Oh, but we are Jewish, and they sent me to a Jewish school.'''
LENGTH: Medium: 84 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: AP. 1. Prominent American Jews stand in a labyrinthby CNB(left) on Ellis Island for photographer Frederic Brenner. In the
front fow, from left, are artist Roy Lichtenstein, actress Lauren
Bacall, violinist Itzhak Perlman, playwright Arthur Miller and
Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. 2. Brenner (above, left)
directs Isaac Stern and Dr. Ruth Westheimer for the project.