Rafael Goldchain followed in the footsteps of his family history and created a unique, semi-fictional photographic family tree of his Canadian-Polish-Chilean-Argentinean-Jewish family by slipping into their shoes after researching the biographies and personal life data and circumstances of his ancestors — getting into their skin.

All of Goldchain’s ancestors portrayed in the series “I Am My Family” are represented by himself and brought to life photographically by means of lovingly made masks and carefully selected props. In a kind of reenactment, the artist traces the world of the Eastern European Shtetl, which perished in the Holocaust, as well as the lifestyle of Polish intellectuals and Argentine tango musicians.

Goldchain gives all these people his own face and at the same time takes the viewer on a journey through the 19th and 20th centuries: to the places of a multiple loss of homeland.

Rafael Goldchain. Born in Santiago de Chile in 1953. Grew up in Jerusalem. Lives and works in Toronto. Studied photography, art and history in Toronto. Represented In many solo and group exhibitions internationally. Awarded, among others, “The Duke and Duchess of York Award in Photography.”

www.rafaelgoldchain.com

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