The only son
of Holocaust survivors, raised in Montreal, a dancer, choreographer, chef,
graduate student, and teacher, he came to photography late. His deep knowledge
of European art, and especially of seventeenth-century of Italian painting; his
immersion in Torah and Talmud; his inexhaustible love for the beauty of men and
his provocative, shame-deflating celebration of their erotic energy; his wry
sense of camp, which was at once just Jewish and just queer enough; a luminous
faith in the holiness of the body, and of embodied pleasure and desire--all these emerge in work that those of us
who remember him for his brilliant, generous, quirky, courtly self are
determined will not pass into oblivion.
Traditional
commemoration of the Yarhzeit--the anniversay of a loved one’s death--is made
by reciting the Kaddish, the prayer on behalf of the dead, and by lighting a
candle that will burn for twenty-four hours. It’s reckoned among the Orthodox
according to the Hebrew calendar. But as queer a Jew and as Jewish a queer as
Oscar was, I can’t believe he’d object to this alternative commemoration: the
posting here of one of his images each day for the next month, from tomorrow
until the Winter Solstice on December 21.
GLORIFIED AND SANCTIFIED BE THE HOLY ONE'S GREAT NAME, THROUGHOUT
THE WORLD CREATED ACCORDING TO THE
DIVINE WILL. ESTABLISHED BE GOD'S KINGDOM IN YOUR LIFETIME AND DURING YOUR DAYS,
AND WITHIN THE LIFE OF ALL HUMANKIND, SPEEDILY AND SOON, AND LET US SAY, AMEN.
MAY GOD'S GREAT NAME BE BLESSED FOREVER AND TO ALL ETERNITY.
BLESSED AND PRAISED, GLORIFIED AND EXALTED, EXTOLLED AND
HONORED, ADORED AND LAUDED BE THE NAME OF THE HOLY ONE, BLESSED BE THAT ONE
BEYOND ALL BLESSINGS AND HYMNS, PRAISES AND CONSOLATIONS THAT ARE EVER SPOKEN
IN THE WORLD, AND LET US SAY, AMEN.
MAY THERE BE ABUNDANT PEACE FROM HEAVEN AND LIFE FOR US AND
FOR ALL MEN, AND LET US SAY AMEN.
MAY GOD WHO CREATES PEACE IN THE CELESTIAL
HEIGHTS CREATE PEACE FOR US AND FOR ALL THE WORLD, AND LET US SAY, AMEN.
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