September 8, 2016
How Jews Transformed the Way the British Understood Photography
By William Meyers"Why Jews and photography?" asked Prince Philip. Because, a new book shows, Jews were everywhere in British photography.
“Why Jews and photography? Aren’t Jews everywhere in the arts and professions? So what?”
These words were spoken by Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh and husband of Queen Elizabeth II, to Michael Berkowitz, a professor of modern Jewish history at University College London. In 2012, the two men were talking about a specific photographer, known professionally as Baron (1906-1956), who had been a friend of Philip’s and who took the official photographs for, among other occasions, Philip and Elizabeth’s wedding and the christenings of their two eldest children.
Born in England, “Baron,” the son of an Italian Jew from Tripoli, had never hidden his Jewish roots. (His given name was Sterling Henry Nahum.) To Prince Philip, at any rate, none of this seems to have been particularly noteworthy. (“So what?”) Yet the prince’s questions to Michael Berkowitz are pertinent to the latter’s recently published book, Jews and Photography in Britain.