Ever wish you could just stare at kids in Purim costumes without looking away? Thanks to French photographer Estelle Hanania, now you can. In her gorgeous photography book Happy Purim (Shelter Press), she selects her favorite shots from the Purims she spent wandering the ultra-Orthodox neighborhood of Stamford Hill in North London, photographing the homemade costumes kids wear.
Her photos include kids dressed as everything from a Torah scroll, a clown, some Raggedy Anns and an inexplicable pepperoni (maybe it’s kosher?) pizza mask with no eyeholes.
There are lots of twins decked out in top hats and tails, or equestrian attire, or matching dresses and bonnets. There are a few blackface costumes (maybe they don’t know better), and some head-scratching legs-for-heads.
All the subjects are posed against nondescript brick walls and fences, juxtaposing the kids’ fantasies with the banality of their surroundings.
Hanania has shot for various magazines and fashion designers, but her fine art photography focuses on the physical body and masks, costumes and fetishes as signifiers of identity.
Many of the kids in Happy Purim dress like older versions of themselves: a rabbi with a long robe and shtreimel (fur hat), or an elderly woman with a silver wig, shawl and cane.
Hanania points out that the Hebrew word for costume – “tachposhet” – literally means “to search for oneself.” These kids are dressing up for Purim, but Hanania shows us there’s something deeper going on.
Reprinted with permission of Estelle Hanania.
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