BACK TO SHUL

SECOND EDITION (2019)

Lithuania’s 100 or so surviving former synagogues are among a tiny handful of reminders of the country’s once large and diverse Jewish population, magnificent monuments of stone and wood that not unlike the people that once prayed and studied in them today lie neglected, abandoned and forgotten in towns, villages and cities from Alytus to Zarasai. With the help of little more than a cheap Latvian smartphone and a random cast of kind-hearted friends and strangers, in August 2017 the English documentary photographer and long-term resident of Lithuania Richard Schofield set off on a 12-day journey around the country to document these extraordinary—and extraordinarily tragic—buildings in a small act of personal remembrance as the nation approached the 100th anniversary of the re-establishment of its independence. Part road trip, part photographic essay and part love letter to one former synagogue in particular, Back to Shul is the singularly unorthodox result of an equally unusual journey.