Ampersand – A Photography Series by Hedva Rokach
In 2025, the Maine Jewish Museum invited Hedva Rokach to create an artistic and documentary photography series exploring Jewish life in the state of Maine. Within a short time, Rokach established connections with people willing to be photographed and share their lives with her. Over eight weeks, she traveled more than 7,000 miles across the state, meeting and photographing nearly 300 people in Jewish communities, large and small. The enthusiastic response surprised the museum, since many people in Maine, a vast and sparsely populated state, value their privacy and the opportunity to live away from the public eye.
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The series includes portraits, photographs of details from people’s everyday surroundings, and images of the places and communal spaces where they live and work: cities and towns, synagogues, galleries, and workplaces. Together, the photographs form a collage of Jewish life in Maine, moving between the private and the public, the individual and the community. They portray people within the different settings of their lives and reveal the many facets of Jewish life in Maine, as well as the connections among people, communities, and traditions.
Rokach photographs without staging, using natural light and the existing lighting conditions at each location. Her ability to connect with the people she photographs allows her to portray them in their living and working environments.
The series is on permanent view as part of the exhibition There Is Always an & at the Maine Jewish Museum and the Holocaust and Human Rights Center of Maine (HHRC). It also forms the basis of the bilingual photography book Faces & Facets of Jewish Life in Maine (Itay Bahur Publishing, 2026).
