The Ancestor Blueprint photography project examines the relationship between ancestry, family history and identity. The project consists of a portrait series that juxtaposes contemporary images of modern-day Jewish subjects with Old World pictures of their grandparents, illuminating striking familial resemblances across generations and vivid contrasts shaped by historical, social and cultural discontinuities.
The project is an attempt to uncover a poignant connection with our personal and collective past, while exploring the relationship between inherited traits and self-identity through the idioms of digital and vintage photography.
Ancestor Blueprint follows modern Jewish immigrants across the globe to reveal how distant family histories are inscribed into the folds of the contemporary Jewish self. The elegiac family photographs bear a special significance as they testify to the upheavals of history, uprootedness, and the pains of immigration while presenting before us the only evidence of a bygone family past.
Find more at ancestorproject.blogspot.com/
Fellows
Anna Rozhdestvenskaya
Ancestor Blueprint
Anya Roz is an artist, photographer and designer residing in New York on the Spanish side of Harlem, was born and raised in Moscow in an eclectic family of artists, musicians and photographers, learning to live in the middle of a self generated art scene – visual material being the source of both self exploration and collaboration.
Anya says, “Although I have worked in mediums ranging from oil to video, and had made a living as a graphic designer for the past ten years in New York, my work has focused on photography and painting, and finding a unique visual link between the two mediums. I have also explored lots of antique archival photographs, using their digital replicas in my collage and mixed media work.”
