I met Chrystie Sherman while we were both working for The American Sephardi Federation at The Center for Jewish History in New York City, I as a graphic artist and Chrystie as a photographer. The idea for pairing our individual skills for a gallery exhibition of Tunisian synagogues came about during the Covid-19 pandemic, beginning in 2020.
The exhibition incorporates both Chrystie’s single images of synagogues and cemeteries taken for the Diarna Project during 2016–2019 and photomontages created by me. Using Chrystie’s photos as source material, I used the images to create dynamic photomontages, taking advantage of their beauty and negative space. This project has become a collaboration which showcases historical Jewish spaces in Tunisia as both culturally important and aesthetically beautiful. Reimagining the spaces, a viewer of the exhibit can find the source images within the composites—like solving a puzzle.