Camera Obscura

קאַמעראַ אָבסקוראַ

 CELEBRATE │ INVESTIGATE │ DOCUMENT

Camera Obscura is a combined cultural history and provenance research project that celebrates the beauty and the diversity of pre-Second World War Lithuanian Jewish photographs through the lives of the hundreds of mostly forgotten Lithuanian Jewish women and men who originally made them. More than that, it investigates the near-total destruction of Lithuanian Jewish glass plate negatives, film negatives and paper prints that took place in parallel with the murder of almost 200,000 Lithuanian Jewish men, women and children during Nazi Germany’s occupation of the country between June 22, 19411 and January 28, 1945, and documents the current locations and—wherever possible—the previous biographies of the smattering of images that survived the war2. 

Camera Obscura would like to express enormous gratitude to the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, the German Federal Ministry of Finance, the EVZ Foundation, the Jewish Historical Society of England, the Lithuanian Council for Culture and a wide range of other kind-hearted and generous people around the world who've not only given money, but who've contributed in lots of other ways. The project is far from complete, and it's never too late to make a difference.

Richard Schofield

Founding Editor, Camera Obscura

1 March 22, 1939, if you include the Klaipėda Region/Memel Territory.

2 The Elephant in the Darkroom is also concerned with the disappearance and the destruction of non-photographic objects that once belonged to the Jews of Lithuania.