Rafael Goldchain will discuss a range of his photographs while dwelling on biographical details, his production process, and aesthetic and philosophical reflections.
This series of informal talks feature speakers with unique perspectives who offer their insights about and responses to the current exhibition at the Koffler Gallery.
The Synagogue at Babyn Yar: Turning the Nightmare of Evil into a Shared Dream of Good is rooted in the specific experience of Jewish people in Ukraine – then and now – as well as the Holocaust and, in the broadest sense, antisemitism. All the more reason to celebrate family in the present and to delve into the deep roots of our family trees.
Rafael Goldchain’s talk will look at his self-portraiture work as the intersection where his artistic practice, his family history and genealogical research, and his passion for photographic portraiture meet. Goldchain will discuss a range of his photographs while dwelling on biographical details, his production process, and aesthetic and philosophical reflections.
Rafael Goldchain is a Jewish Latin-American Canadian Toronto-based photographer. He earned a Master of Arts – Art History (University of Toronto, 2017), Master of Fine Arts (York University, 2000), and Bachelor of Applied Arts (Toronto Metropolitan University 1980). Goldchain’s photographs have been published in several books, including Ann Thomas and John McElhone’s The Extended Moment (2018), Andrea Kunard’s Photography in Canada 1960-2000 (2017), William Ewing’s Face: The New Photographic Portrait (2007) and Joan Murray’s Canadian Art in the Twentieth Century (1999). His work is the subject of two book monographs: Nostalgia for an Unknown Land (1989) and I Am My Family (2008), and of a film entitled Beautifully Broken: The Life and Times of Rafael Goldchain (2013). Goldchain’s photographs have been exhibited across Canada, the United States, Chile, Cuba, Germany, France, Italy, the Czech Republic, and México. His work is included in public and private collections including the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris; National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; Museum of Modern Art, New York; and, the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto. In 2023, Goldchain retired from teaching in the Honours Bachelor of Photography at Sheridan College in Oakville.
