Letters to Afar

Letters to Afar is an immersive video art installation based on home movies made by New York City’s Jewish immigrants who traveled back to visit Poland during the 1920s and 30s. The films document poignant family reunions and everyday life in cities and small towns in the years before the Second World War, capturing a culture on the brink. Unknowingly, they also provided a snapshot of the extraordinary autonomy and richness of Jewish life in interwar Poland, and the great diversity of school, youth, self-help and cultural organizations that existed at the time. The installation was created by Hungarian artist Péter Forgács with a haunting soundtrack by the New York-based band The Klezmatics. These “letters” bring to life a lost world in startling and moving detail.

Letters to Afar was commissioned by POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw and the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research in 2013. This unique multimedia exhibition is based on a YIVO collection of home movies that were digitized with support from the Righteous Persons Foundation in 2006.

This exhibition is made possible with generous support from the Seedlings Foundation, the Kronhill Pletka Foundation, and the Righteous Persons Foundation.

Past Locations:
POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews (Warsaw 2013)
Museum of the City of New York (New York 2014)
The Contemporary Jewish Museum (San Fransisco 2015)