From Russia With Love 1963

This is a story of where I came from and the story of millions like me. I am a 2nd generation Russian yet I have little connection to the country. My great great grandfather owned a farm in the small town of Vitebsk, now Belarus (home of Marc Chagall). He arrived in Ellis Island in 1913 and became a Rag Picker. My grandmother lived in a log cabin in Russia. Her job was to feed, clean and board the horses that belonged to the Russian army. She arrived in 1923 with her mother and 2 brothers. They were unable to come for 10 years because WW1 broke out. Later in life she ran a rooming house in the Catskills Mountains of upstate New York with a community kitchen. My mother lived with her sister, grandparents, and my grandmother there in the summers and the Bronx. They spoke the dying language of Yiddish. My 85 year old mother speaks it as well. Typical of the time, I was not to learn it. The few times I heard it was when they didn’t want me to understand what they were saying. Immigrants wanted to assimilate as quickly as possible to become part of their new home and to forget their old homes of where their lives were tormented with anti-semitism, war and poverty. The only phrase in Yiddish I remember form childhood is “du makhst mikh mshuge.” My mother was happy to translate, “You are making me crazy”.

Deep in my inner cells I have a home in Russia.

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I created the varied edition prints (VE) utilizing Solarplate etching with Intaglio. The original is a black and white photograph taken by my father with an early model Polaroid camera. The photograph is 4 generations of woman in my family. My great grandmother, grandmother, mother, my sister and me at one years old.
The print 4/9 VE is painted with water colors after printing. I chose this image to represent the alien status of immigrants.