שיר אינסופי Infinite Poem: Jewish Placemaking in the Deep South | Photographs by Emily Williams

January 8 - March 1, 2025

Please join us on Thursday, January 23 at 6:00PM for a Do Good Salon featuring an artist talk with Emily Williams and special guest Andrew Feiler.

Infinite Poem, titled after the work of Yehuda Amichai, is an exploration of identity and place - both literal and metaphorical - in small Jewish communities in the Deep South. Faced simultaneously with antisemitism and both pressure and opportunity to assimilate into whiteness, this work seeks to understand how Jewish communities have preserved traditions while forging their own unique identity in places that are often perceived as the very edges of the diaspora.

This selection of images and oral history audio recordings document a broad range of Jewish sites and experiences through photography and oral history interviews across Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia. Almost all of the sites fall into three main categories - synagogues, storefronts, and cemeteries. The aforementioned places often served more than one purpose.

Plots of land for cemeteries were frequently the first collective purchase of Jewish communities when they found themselves in a new, often foreign, place. Storefronts were not simply places of commerce, but often acted as makeshift synagogues for communities which lacked a designated building. Synagogues continue to hold importance far beyond worship, and serve as places to preserve language, foodways, traditions, and culture. Although שיר אינסופי/Infinite Poem deals with specifically with religious sites, primarily synagogues, the images encompass all three categories.

There is no singular conclusion to be drawn from the body of work, no capital “T” Truth, rather a series of smaller truths elucidated through images and audio. This exhibition celebrates the persistence of these communities, mourns their loss, and preserves what was and what still is. It seeks to fill a silence in the archive by uplifting the voices, spaces, and places of Southern Jews and Jewish Southerners. 

Emily Williams is a Pennsylvania-based artist interested in investigating communal and individual memory, identity, and placemaking through photography, writing, and audio. She is currently a visiting assistant professor of photography at Haverford College. She holds a BA in fine arts and history from Haverford College and an MFA in photography from Louisiana State University. Her current body of work We had to know who we were; We had to know who we weren't explores Jewish identity, history, and memory in the rural and small-town Deep South. She has received funding from the Southern Jewish Historical Society, Texas Jewish Historical Society, and the LSU School of Art Graduate Student Scholarly & Creative Activity Support Fund, and is a current Jewish Alabama Folklife Fellow.

Andrew Feiler is a photographer and author and fifth generation Georgian. Having grown up Jewish in Savannah, he has been shaped by the rich complexities of the American South. Feiler has long been active in civic life. He has helped create over a dozen community initiatives, serves on multiple not-for-profit boards, and is an active advisor to numerous elected officials and political candidates. His art is an extension of his civic values.

Feiler was named “Book Photographer of the Year” by Prix de la Photographie Paris in 2022 for his book, A Better Life for Their Children: Julius Rosenwald, Booker T. Washington, and the 4,978 Schools that Changed America.

His work has been featured in the Wall Street Journal, Smithsonian, The Atlantic, L’Œil de la Photographie, Architect, Preservation, The Forward as well as on CBS This Morning, PBS, and NPR. His prints have been displayed in galleries and museums including solo exhibitions at such venues as the National Civil Rights Museum at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, National Center for Civil and Human Rights in Atlanta, and International Civil Rights Center & Museum in Greensboro, NC. His photographs are in public and private collections including that of the Library of Congress and the Smithsonian Institution’s National Portrait Gallery.

All Do Good Fund exhibitions and events are free and open to the public

Gallery hours: Wed, Thurs, Fri: 1-5 PM | Sat: 10-3 PM

The Do Good Fund Gallery | 111 12th Street suite 103 | Columbus, GA 31901