On a brisk winter afternoon in 1999, Jewish-American photographer Gillian Laub stepped onto the streets of New York’s Upper East Side to enjoy a cigarette in between classes at the International Center of Photography. As she stood there, a Norwegian classmate spotted a gaggle of older women adorned in lavish furs and brightly colored lipstick walking down the block. He found them vulgar and called them as much. Gillian nodded along — until recognition struck.
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“Gillian, oh my gawd, what are you doing up here?” her grandmother Bea screamed, the thick Bronx Yiddish accent filling the air like the full-bodied parfum of a potato knish served up piping hot from a sidewalk cart. Bea, accompanied by Gillian’s mother and her Aunt Phyllis, enveloped her with an effusive display of hugs and kisses, before rejoining a larger group of ladies making their weekly Upper East Side art crawl.
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Gillian felt embarrassed, then defensive, wanting the Scandinavian student to understand and perhaps empathize with her family’s rags to riches story; their exuberant show of wealth — like their extravagant displays of affection — was evidence of their fierce determination to overcome prejudice and discrimination. Gillian fought back the urge to explain how a series of anti-Semitic pogroms during the Russian Revolution of 1905 split both sides of her family apart. Her great-grandparents fled Ukraine and headed to distant shores, arriving in the US in the early 20th century to make a better life for themselves.
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