As part of Open City, an outdoor performance festival in Lublin, Poland, the artist Ronen Eidelman collected photographs of Lublin Jews dating between 1920 and 1940. He “returned” the people to their native city–making life-sized reproductions of the pictures, and pasting them on the walls of boarded-up houses, doorways, and other public spaces.
“Coming Out in Lublin, Poland” is a photography exhibition without walls–a haunting tour of a world that used to be, superimposed on modern-day Lublin. As fascinating as it is to see these black-and-white figures out of place, in the online slideshow of this exhibition, we can also see contemporary Lublin citizens reacting to these ghosts of their city’s past.
To really get the feeling of the photographs, one would have to walk around the entire city. Fortunately for us, Eidelman’s online slideshow is the next best thing…and, in seeing it, we give these images a life beyond their physical limits.
