13 November 2008 - 11 January 2009

This is the first retrospective in Europe of the work of the painter, photographer, teacher and industrial designer Nathan Lerner. Born in 1913 in Chicago of Jewish Ukrainian immigrant parents, in 1935 Lerner began a photographic project on the neighbourhood where he was born, centring on Maxwell Street and its market. He intended this work as a testimony to America during the Depression and to the poverty of the immigrant neighbourhood where he grew up. In 1937 he was one of the first students of the New Bauhaus founded by László Moholy-Nagy, where he experimented with abstract photography. He went on to teach there, and left to set up his own design studio in 1949.
The exhibition was made possible by a donation by his widow, Kiyoko Lerner, who has given 93 photographs to the museum.

Curated by Laurence Sigal and Nicolas Feuillie

Musée d'art et d'histoire du judaïsme
www.mahj.org
71 rue du Temple, 3e. Métro : Rambuteau
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