INHERITANCE

ANDREA STERN

MY FATHER was the family photographer. During my childhood, one of his greatest pleasures was documenting our lives. At each family gathering, he was there, camera in hand, ready to capture the occasion and add to an everexpanding and impressive archive of family memories. He brought the same passion and determination to photography that he did to every aspect of his life. He thought nothing of breaking through the spectator barrier at my high school track meet to get the shot he wanted. As an adolescent, I cringed in mortification at such moments of public trespass. In private, though, I

never tired of viewing the bounty of my fathers efforts; the faces of all our relatives surveyed us from every inch of wall space in my childhood home. Surrounded by these pictures, each one a glowing tribute, I became forever captive to the powerful alchemy of family and photography. Away at college and drained by academic rhetoric, I searched for a new way to express myself. I casually chose an introductory documentary photography class and was instantly enthralled by the world that unfolded before me. I reveled in the novelty of learning a new art form, discovering the subtle language of

light and gesture. I photographed my life and friends at school, but from very early on, I knew my true subject would be my family. After graduation, I returned home to begin what would become a fifteen-year photographic record. My family was perfectly constituted for such an undertaking. Most of my twenty-nine first cousins live in New York City, and the habit of showing up to the many family gettogethers held throughout the year was instilled in us as children. One of those was Shabbos lunch at my paternal grandparents apartment. Every Saturday, my parents, brothers, and I

would take the long walk across Central Park to synagogue at the Jewish Center. While the walk and the two or three hours of Shabbat services seemed endless, I always looked forward to lunch at Nanny and Opopis. Sitting at the kids table, drinking Orange Crush, playing with my many cousins, gorging on candy after dessert: I relished those afternoons. As I grew older, I understood that my grandfather, Max Stern, expected our attendance every week, as a commitment both to the family and to Jewish tradition. I remember my grandfather as a charismatic and charming man. I wish he were alive today so I could deepen my understanding of the person who, in so many ways, set the course for my life. He was a legendary character: a rugged entrepreneur, a visionary, a philanthropist, and the patriarch of our family. As a young man in Fulda, Germany, he once collected on a debt with five thousand singing canaries. When he emigrated in 1926, he brought with him a ship filled with canariesand a grand vision. He started a company named after the German region that bred the best singing canariesHartz Mountain. From Hartz Mountain, my father went on to build a significant financial empire. My generation of the family has been, to greater or lesser degrees, the beneficiary of those two generations of successful entrepreneurs. This is the source of one part of my inheritance. Along with this financial inheritance, I received many legacies, imparted to me either

directly or unconsciously by those closest to me. Accordingly, one of the things that fascinates me and informs my work is trying to penetrate the multitude of unspoken messages that family members transmit to one another. I hear the lore, and I question what might be left behind. I imagine my photographs filling in the answers. With my camera in hand, I embrace the present, closely studying those around me. Taken at family gatherings, my photographs trace my familys migrations: New York in the fall, Palm Beach in the winter, Long Island in the summer, and wherever we gather for bar mitzvahs, weddings, or sometimes, funerals. These gatherings, with their predictability and uniformity, reinforce the strong sense of belonging to this close-knit community. Although we all live our separate lives, we continually return to familiar ground. In the same vein, I consider my place within the Jewish tradition, a place inextricably linked for me, from childhood, with my family values and celebrations. My mother has always understood this link between the family and Judaism and made it her goal to teach us the importance of preserving those ties. In this, she has been largely successful; all of us continue, today, to see ourselves as committed to the chain of Jewish traditions and rituals that create the root center of our calendars each year. I have heard that those who are fluent in a second language enjoy a unique freedom. In an

adopted tongue, they can inhabit an entirely different persona and approach the world anew. The camera does this for me. The moments that resonate are the private ones, raw and uncensored. I take refuge behind the camera, achieving a stolen intimacy. Always I experience an exhilarating freedom, aware each time I look through the lens that I discover a world different from the world around me. Behind the camera, I try not to draw attention to myself, in part because what I am looking for people dont readily give up. As I continue to work, I realize that the photographs begin to tell their own story, and through them my narrative of family dynamics begins to emerge. Inheritance brings together the photographs I have taken of those closest to me. I have been profoundly influenced and affected by them, on occasion in unexpected ways. At times, I experience a unique harmony with those with whom I share a history, a gene pool, and many unspoken secrets. At other times, our differences surface, and we exist as a tenuous network of individuals, each protecting our own frailties, drives, and ambitions. I am aware, always, that my beginnings lie with my family as I struggle to understand where their place in my life ends and my own life begins. These photographs, in the end, are my gift of love to those who came before and to those who will follow.