Photographer Trains Lens on Far-Flung Chasidic Community

He has won multiple awards for a portfolio that includes politicians, royalty, fashion models and film stars. He has photographed the likes as Bill Clinton, Margaret Thatcher, Ben Stiller, and Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, and is regarded by some as one of the world’s most exciting fashion and portrait photographers.

But it is the world of Chabad-Lubavitch rabbis and their families that forms the unlikely subject for Frederic Aranda’s first solo exhibition, “Kosherface,” which begins this week in London.

“It all began when I was a student in my final year,” recalls Aranda, who started to explore portrait photography as an alternative to painting while studying at the University of Oxford.

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“I was looking through the classifieds for a place to live,” continues the photographer. “I responded to an advertisement for a room in a Jewish house. When Rabbi Eli and Freidy Brackman opened the door of the Chabad House, I immediately realized this was an Orthodox Jewish home.”

Although not particularly observant, Aranda saw living in the Oxford Chabad House as an opportunity to experience and learn more about his own cultural heritage.

“My previous experiences of Orthodox Jews made me think that it would be difficult and perhaps even uncomfortable living there as a non-religious Jew,” he reveals. But, “my expectations were shattered. I could ask them anything without them judging or coercing me.”

Over the course of the year, Aranda transformed his attic room in the Chabad House into a makeshift photographic studio.

“By that time,” he describes, “I was using photography to record my fascination for the world around me: things that were important to me and made an impression on me.”

It was on the occasion of the circumcision of the Brackmans’ son Mendel that Aranda started to photograph the Lubavitch community.

“The house was full of people and I saw it as an amazing opportunity for me to get portraits of this fascinating world in which people define themselves first and foremost as Jewish,” he details. “I got them to come up one by one into my room and sit for me.”

Aranda photographed a Jewish bride during a preliminary wedding ceremony in “Bedecken.” (Photo: Frederic Aranda)

A Lot More to Photograph

In the seven years since snapping those photos in his makeshift studio, Aranda has forged a successful career; his whose work regularly appears on the pages of Vogue, Vanity Fair, GQ and the Sunday Times. Through it all, he’s also spent time amongst Chabad Chasidim in London and Brooklyn, N.Y., and travelled to places as diverse as Tokyo, Milan, Paris and Berlin where the community’s emissaries and rabbinical students run Jewish centers, engage passersby in conversation and educate Jewish men and women about their heritage.

Aranda’s work depicting the far-flung world of Lubavitch includes striking and original images of emissaries and their families in their day-to-day lives and at weddings and circumcisions; one of his photos was taken during the traditional group picture of 3,000 rabbis as part of the annual International Conference of Chabad-Lubavitch Emissaries. (That conference coincidentally begins this week at Lubavitch World Headquarters in Brooklyn.)

This collection forms the basis of “Kosherface,” which runs from Nov. 13 to Dec. 2 at London’s Theprintspace Gallery. And whereas many exhibitions focusing on the Jewish community tend to ground themselves in such themes as the Holocaust or Israel, Aranda sees his photography as deeply personal explorations of his own experiences.

“With this show, I’m not exotifying the stereotype of a Jewish person,” he explains. “From a fashion photographer’s perspective, the Lubavitch community is a fascinating subject. There are a lot of things about how Lubavitch men dress – their cuts of suits, the contrast of black and white, and the hats – which are echoed constantly in men’s fashion throughout the world.”

Chabad women, as well, presented an interesting challenge to Aranda’s world view.

“Photographing women in Lubavitch was very refreshing because, contrary to expectations, they are very strong, know who they are and what they want,” he says. “I’m used to photographing models and for once, this is a group of women who aren’t interested in prioritizing vanity and fashion. They’re actually thinking about more important things, and there is a lot more there to photograph.”

As far as choosing to focus his first solo exhibition on something other than iconic world figures, Aranda says that it was a natural decision.

“I’m genuinely interested in depicting what is beyond the uniform and all that accoutrement. There is a lot of energy and passion in the Lubavitch community and I wanted to show that,” he states. “Putting on an exhibition showing my celebrity portraits would ultimately not be very interesting.

“It is much more interesting for me to do something that challenges myself and others,” he adds. “People are genuinely interested in learning more about the Lubavitch world and I think that I’m in a very good position to bring it to a larger audience, as I appreciate the work they do and the way they live from my first-hand experience.”