Eli's Town

Highland Center for the arts is proud to present this photo essay by Vermont photographer Elliot Burg, on exhibit in the HCA Gallery. “Eli’s Town” recounts Burg’s retracing of the route that his great-grandfather took in 1881 from Austria-Hungary to the Ukrainian village of Ozeran, where his son, Eli, was born.

“When I traveled to Ukraine in 2017, it was with the goal of photographing the country and its people en-route to the place where my Grandpa Eli was born. As it turned out, the search for Eli’s town took on a deeper meaning for me, encompassing themes of preconception and discovery, brutality and kindness, extraordinary events in ordinary settings. It connected my heart to an overseas community, Ozeran, that consisted of little more than a crossroads and a collection of farmhouses, but where my great-grandfather had arrived 136 years before to work and have a family, and where 61 years later, the Jewish residents had been rounded up and massacred by the Nazis and their collaborators. My thoughts about the journey caught up with the images, leading to this collection of photographs and text. It is my hope that this exhibit will resonate for others, and that it may even encourage some to pursue their own Ozerans.” – Elliot Burg