Photograph Series: I

Dad in front of work

My father was a librarian— when he was not taking photos of his children. He worked until 2 p.m. in the afternoons, in a library on the main road leading to our tiny downtown district. We lived in a small town on the edge of the Mediterranean Sea. My father’s parents escaped from Europe and built an entire country with their bare hands; roads and homes and fields from which their children were fed. They came to this desert land and named their first-born son Israel.

My father is standing in front of the brick wall of the library’s only entrance. His hands are shoved in his jean pockets; a dark curl escapes and lands on his forehead. He is tall and shiny like a 1940’s movie star. A movie star in flannel. He squints against the bright sunlight.

Barely two decades before this photo was taken, the luxury of books, of freedom and sunshine, would have seemed a distant star to my father’s father, alone in a cold room in Romania, soldiers marching on the street below.