The photographs, with text by Péter Závada, are being shown in the capital?s Rumbach Street synagogue.
Bourel captures in his images young Hasidic Jews, Lubavitchers, Jewish holidays and Jewish workdays. But this is a narrow view of the Jewish community, a view that does not appear to be from the 21st century.
Bourel?s photographs tell no more about Jewish community in the capital than those of Tamás Féner, whose images also documented the faith, traditions, culture and desire for continuity of these people.
Nowhere in Bourel?s photographs do we see the renaissance of Jewish culture in the capital: everything from the Talmud-groups to the websites extolling Jewish gastronomy. No, these images record a small part of Jewish culture, a few hundred people who closely guard its traditions.
The exhibition shows ? from an outsider?s eye ? the more exotic signs of a culture that was nearly wiped out in perfectly composed, black-and-white images, but it shows too little. It is only the text of Závada that rescues the show from being choked in a fog of nostalgia.
Author: Eszter Götz
