The People of the Book in the World of Books is a Russian bimonthly publication for serious readers with Jewish interests. Our English website includes only the summaries of the published articles. To access the complete text of them, please visit the Russian version of this website.


96

February 2012

This issue of the magazine includes:


• Names: David Goberman (1912–2003)


The biography of David Goberman, Petersburg art scholar, artist, and photographer, might be called iconic. He was born in Minsk to a large Jewish family, began his education at a cheder, continued it at a Soviet “labor school” and “workers’ faculty,” and later, in the thirties, studied at the Leningrad Academy of Arts. He became interested in folk art, particularly in traditional carved tombstones in Jewish cemeteries in Ukraine, Belorussia, and Moldova, while still a student, and it remained one of his major research interests for the rest of his life. He compiled his first photographic album on the art of Jewish stonecutters in the mid-sixties, but despite his efforts was unable to publish it in the Soviet Union at that time. Fortunately, he lived to see all his photographs published in books and displayed in museums, including the large-scale exhibition Carved Memories: Tombstones of the Russian Jewish Pale, at the Brooklyn Museum of Art in 2000. The article, dedicated to the hundredth anniversary of Goberman’s birth, analyzes his legacy as the author of numerous albums on Moldovan, Ukrainian, and Jewish folk art. It is followed by a complete bibliography of his works.


New Dimensions: Life Can Be Found in the Hell Only


This philosophical essay analyzes the biographies and works of two famous photographers—Diane Arbus (1923–1971) and Robert Capa (1913–1954). The impetus for the author’s reflections is Capa’s memoirs, Slightly Out of Focus, recently published in Russian translation.


Looking Through Russian Literary Magazines: Novels and Articles of Jewish Interest


Jewish Calendar of Significant Dates: March–April 2012


Bibliography: 25 New Books