Everyone Is Present: Essays On Photography, Memory And Family, by Terry Kurgan

In this book, Terry Kurgan begins with a family snapshot made by her Polish grandfather in 1939 on the eve of the war. Presenting this evocative image as a repository of multiple histories public, private, domestic, familial, and generational she sets off on a series of meditations on photography that give us startling insights into how photographs work: what they conceal, how they mislead, what provocations they contain. Each essay takes up the thread of the story of her familys epic journey across Europe as they flee Nazi occupation, until they reach Cape Town. Kurgans essays are part memoir, part travelogue, part analysis, and they demonstrate her sophisticated understanding of a medium that has long engaged her as an artist. WINNER THE SUNDAY TIMES ALAN PATON AWARD (SOUTH AFRICA) FINALIST FOR THE 2019 NATIONAL JEWISH BOOK AWARD (NEW YORK) SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2019 PHOTO ARLES PRIX DU LIVRE (FRANCE)