"What Is Represented Is What Is at Stake": Frederic Brenner on jews/america/a representation

The following interview between the photographer Frédéric Brenner and the photo-historian and theorist Louis Kaplan was conducted on 3 February 2002 in New York City. The conversation focuses primarily on Brenner's project jews/america/a representation (New York: Harry Abrams, 1996). Frédéric Brenner was born in Paris in 1959 and trained as a social anthropologist. While he began using photography as part of his ethnographic studies, the images in the jews/america project are quite theatrical and highly staged constructions. His latest exhibition (The Jewish Journey: Frédéric Brenner's Photographic Odyssey, A Portrait of Diversity) was shown recently at the Brooklyn Museum of Art (October 2003 -January 2004), and it is currently on tour in the United States, Europe, and Asia. The exhibition is accompanied by a book published in two volumes, Diaspora: Homelands in Exile (New York: Harper-Collins, 2003).

Words in brackets [ ] are the editor's translations or explications of certain points in the text.

LOUIS KAPLAN: Frédéric, I'm going to be talking with you about four general subject areas that I would like you to pursue in the course of this interview. One is to discuss how Diaspora figures in your work. The second area is to review the question of community, and particularly some ways in which jews/america/a representation explores the question of community in the United States. The third area will be the ways in which this same body of work raises issues of media, mediation, and spectacle, and how these shape the formation and transformation of contemporary Jewish identity in the United States and throughout the world. Finally, I would like to discuss with you how humor, and particularly Jewish humor, enters into your work.

FRÉDÉRIC BRENNER: Of course, I would say, how can Diaspora not resonate with my work when it's all about Diaspora? How can the spectacle not resonate with my work when obviously all photographs are extremely elaborated, constructed? And what I'm pointing out is precisely these very constructions—that identities are constructed—and the way I address this is through constructing my photographs. I come from a very traditional background in photography. I believed in photo-reportage, but I believe that photo-reportage should be reinvented. And I claim that I'm a photo-reporter. I just invent . . . I'm trying to invent my own grammar and my own syntax. But I'm trying to find my own voice. So from this perspective, my work is really . . . can be inscribed in this tradition of photo-reportage. But I believe that what has been the challenge of this project over 25 years is to be able to reinvent at each step of this journey the form and the measure of what was at stake in each of the countries that I visited. One has to understand what is at stake.

LK: Right. Talking about this question of what is at stake, you once were quoted as saying about jews/america, "My book is a map, it's not the territory, it doesn't pretend to be exhaustive. Not everybody is represented, but what is represented I believe is what is at stake."¹ So, what exactly is at stake for jews/america/a representation?

FB: As you are talking, it reminds me of one of my first encounters with the American community. And I would say what this work involves, more and more at each step of this project, is the conversation. I always say that as a photographer I consider myself as a midwife for the people that I'm photographing . . . that I'm entering into a conversation. And they are also midwives for me.

LK: Is this idea of being a midwife also...