ART OF ESSEX
A
As a child growing up in Detroit, he always seemed to know how to frame a good photograph with his Kodak Instamatic. But it was always just a casual interest as he grew up. He became an ordained rabbi in 1977 and in 1979 Kushner became the rabbi of Congregation Ner Tamid, whose members come primarily from Bloomfield, Glen Ridge and Montclair, served it until he retired in 2018. As he approached a well-earned retirement, Kushner found that the interest he’d always casually had in photography, not only reawakened, but with a passion. Encouraged by people like Eric Levin, an editor at New Jersey Monthly, himself a celebrated fine art photographer, Kushner found that the making of fine art photographs was more than just a hobby. Inspired by Street Photographers like the late Robert Frank, and an innate curiosity about finding the beauty in inanimate objects, “Things” he says, “that other people probably wouldn’t photograph”, he can be found on an almost daily basis making photographs that have been exhibited in galleries and in online fine art photography publications. In Reaching For The Light, captured digitally in the early days of the pandemic lock down, Kushner examines a bouquet of tulips found in the kitchen of his house. It’s classic Kushner, the flowers a bit past their prime, past when most people would pay much attention to them, and yet he finds the rich colors and the exquisite natural window light an essay in elegance and beauty.
Steven Kushner Discovering a Second Career as an Artist — STORY AND PORTRAIT PHOTO BY DAN EPSTEIN —
26 | Suburban Essex | November 2023