Almost Home - The Return of Holocaust Survivors and Resisters to Postwar Vienna

About the Exhibition

The Frederick R. Weisman Art Museum presents Almost Home, an exhibition of photography and artifacts that explores the experiences of Austrian Holocaust survivors who chose, after 1945, to return permanently to their native city, Vienna.

Almost Home is an exhibition project by photographer Nancy Ann Coyne. It profiles eight survivors by presenting photographic portraits and narratives accompanied by memorial books. These books, created by Coyne, resemble reconstructed family photo albums. In addition, the exhibition includes a rare home movie, from the Israeli photographer, Gilad Ophir, that documents his mother's Viennese family at their Vienna Woods' summer home in 1937.

In 1987, in response to the absence of information in archives and museums concerning the legacy of Viennese Jews, Coyne initiated a case study project integrating contemporary photography with survivors' oral histories and salvaged family photographs. In total, Coyne interviewed 38 Viennese survivors who fled, were deported or imprisoned, lived underground, resisted or rescued Jews. Almost Home is about their individual stories of return.

Almost Home provides an intimate view into returnees' lives and their stories of homes, lost and found. Part photography, part excavation-this project explores issues of place, space, and identity in relationship to personal memory, family albums, and histories.

Information

When & Where

About the Exhibition


Information When & Where February 7 and runs until May 4, 2003 Frederick R. Weisman Art Museum Univeristy of Minnesota, Minneapolis About the Exhibition The Frederick R. Weisman Art Museum presents Almost Home, an exhibition of photography and artifacts that explores the experiences of Austrian Holocaust survivors who chose, after 1945, to return permanently to their native city, Vienna. Almost Home is an exhibition project by photographer Nancy Ann Coyne. It profiles eight survivors by presenting photographic portraits and narratives accompanied by memorial books. These books, created by Coyne, resemble reconstructed family photo albums. In addition, the exhibition includes a rare home movie, from the Israeli photographer, Gilad Ophir, that documents his mother's Viennese family at their Vienna Woods' summer home in 1937. In 1987, in response to the absence of information in archives and museums concerning the legacy of Viennese Jews, Coyne initiated a case study project integrating contemporary photography with survivors' oral histories and salvaged family photographs. In total, Coyne interviewed 38 Viennese survivors who fled, were deported or imprisoned, lived underground, resisted or rescued Jews. Almost Home is about their individual stories of return. Almost Home provides an intimate view into returnees' lives and their stories of homes, lost and found. Part photography, part excavation-this project explores issues of place, space, and identity in relationship to personal memory, family albums, and histories.