The Hebrew word Tamim—“pure,” “unblemished,” “complete”—is traditionally associated with wholeness and faith. In my portraits, I complicate this notion by presenting Jewish men who stand outside conventional representations of Judaism. Their identities, often obscured or denied, broaden the visual canon of Jewish life and reveal a tension between toughness, vulnerability, and heritage
I was raised in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and went to school in a tough neighborhood where Jewish role models were scarce. Many of the men I photograph share this background—growing up without visible connections to Jewish life. Instead of openly embracing their heritage, they often expressed themselves through toughness, style, and self-presentation—tattoos, jewelry, and attitude—as ways of navigating belonging.
In my practice, I ask these men to be photographed explicitly as Jews—a request that can unsettle the identities they’ve worked hard to construct. Yet in front of the camera, I witness a shift. When they place on their heads the yarmulke I wore for my Bar Mitzvah, their posture changes, their gaze softens, and the performance of toughness gives way to something unguarded. This act is not a costume but a ritual gesture, captured in the play of expression and light. Each portrait becomes a brief reconciliation between past and present selves, a moment where memory and ancestry rise to the surface.
My work resonates with a lineage of photographers who expanded the possibilities of portraiture—August Sander’s typologies, Diane Arbus’s portraits of outsiders, Rineke Dijkstra’s searching studies of adolescence. Like them, I use portraiture not simply as likeness but as revelation, where identity becomes layered, unstable, and contingent. My contribution is to turn this inquiry toward Judaism itself, to broaden the visual canon by acknowledging those on the margins as central to its image.
The men in Tamim occupy a liminal position—outsiders in appearance, insiders by ancestry and spirit. They challenge conventional notions of Jewish representation, which too often privilege visible piety or conformity. By wearing the yarmulke of my own Bar Mitzvah, they enact a ritual of return, allowing the portraits to oscillate between concealment and disclosure, toughness and vulnerability, assimilation and faith.
Tamim is less a search for purity than a meditation on endurance. Faith, identity, and belonging are not reducible to costume or surface; they live in memory, gesture, and the willingness to be seen. However disguised, Jewish identity is never wholly extinguished—it endures, awaiting the spark of reconnection. My photographs attempt to hold that spark, and in doing so, broaden the image of what Jewishness looks like today.