Blog

After a particularly inspiring visit to Poland in 2007, I decided that I would build a fence. I wanted to donate the funds to enclose the Jewish cemetery in a specific Polish town to which I felt a connection; however, I had no idea how to initiate the process. In the summer of 2008, when I happened to be in Washington D.C. on vacation, I stopped in at the office of a particular federal agency to see if they could help. One of the staff members was gracious enough to meet with me with no prior notice and spent some time with me. The agency representative asked me several times why I traveled to eastern Europe to photograph cemeteries and synagogues, why I was interested in this work, and similar questions. When she learned that I was not Jewish, she asked if I would not be more interested in funding work at a Christian site in Bulgaria. When I persisted in my desire to build a fence in a particular town, she assured me that the agency could assist me, and that I would hear from her, but I never did. Admittedly my project was a very modest one, but I was prepared to fund it completely. Eventually, when I found that I could not give away money to build a fence, I returned to making photographs.