Artist Emily Rena Williams Discusses Documentation of Rural Jewish Communities at Chandler Hall
Artist and educator Emily Rena Williams presented her work, 'We had to know who we were; We had to know who we weren’t,' at Chandler Hall. Her project documents Jewish communities in rural areas of the South through photography and interviews. Williams emphasized that her work aims to represent the diverse experiences within the Jewish South, rather than drawing a singular conclusion. She focuses on cataloging the built environment, capturing the existing state of places occupied by these communities, both active and former. This includes sites like an old dollar store in Jasper, Alabama, once owned by a Jewish family, and an abandoned Jewish cemetery near Osyka, Mississippi. Williams travels extensively, spending approximately four months each year documenting these areas.
