New exhibit features Asaf Galay’s film based on Fortunoff testimony

By Stephen Naron - June 2, 2025

Exhibit: 20&20 A Lens of Her Own: 20 Distinguished Pioneering Women Photographers and 20 Contemporary Distinguished Women Photographers

Opening: June 4, 2025 at ANU Museum of the Jewish People, Tel Aviv

In photography's formative years, women who had been sidelined from other established art forms emerged as trailblazers in the field. They made a living through photography, traveled the globe with their cameras, presented their work in international exhibitions, and essentially represented an early version of "the new woman." During this turbulent period, marked by political, social, and technological upheavals, talented women photographers documented both the awe-inspiring and the terrifying events of their era.

Yet, the golden age of women in photography was short-lived. Following World War II, this field, too, became male-dominated, leading to the obscurity of many pioneering women's names. 20&20 – A Lens of Her Own revisits that era and those women to rectify a historical injustice, finally acknowledging their significant contributions and celebrating a vital yet underappreciated moment in the history of photography.

The exhibit will feature a short film by Asaf Galay titled “You Have Courage, Madame.” The film examines the life and work of Polish-Jewish photographer Julia Pirotte. The film is based on Pirotte’s Yiddish testimony from the Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies and follows two photographers, Avishag Shaar-Yashuv and Irene Pletka, as they trace her journey through Poland and France. The artists will embark on an inner and outer journey through Poland and the streets of Marseille, visiting the places Julia Pirotte lived and the sites she photographed, meeting people who knew her, and bringing a contemporary perspective to her unique legacy.

More about the film:

“You Have Courage, Madame” tells the extraordinary story of Julia Pirotte, a Jewish resistance fighter in Nazi-occupied France who disguised herself as a photographer of singers and celebrities. Directed by Asaf Galay (“The Adventures of Saul Bellow”), this gripping film portrays the life of an artist who carried a camera in one hand and a pistol in her pocket. After the war, when Pirotte photographed Pablo Picasso in Poland, he told her: “You have courage, Madame” — a phrase that inspired the film’s title.
Trailer: