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June First Friday: Rob Heller

The UT Downtown Gallery is pleased to present “Living On” an exhibition of 24 portraits of holocaust survivors and liberators living in Tennessee by Robert Heller. Heller, a professor in the School of Journalism and Electronic Media at the University of Tennessee since 1986, received his B.S. and M.A. degrees in photojournalism from Syracuse University. He taught photography and graphics for five years at the University of Miami, and was publications designer and photographer at the State University of New York College at New Paltz, and Elmira College in New York. Heller also taught photography at The Center for Photography at Woodstock, New York. His photographs have been selected for numerous juried exhibitions and he continues to do freelance work in both graphic design and photography.

“Living On,” has previously been exhibited in museums around the state of Tennessee and at major cities in Poland. A book of the images and accompanying interviews was published by the University of Tennessee Press in spring, 2008.

Heller is a member of the National Press Photographers Association, the Society for News Design and the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, where he has served as head of the Visual Communication Division.

Journalist Dawn Weiss Smith conducted, recorded, and transcribed the interviews. Documentary filmmaker Will Pedigo of Nashville Public Television, who accompanied Heller and Smith as they traveled across the state, produced Living On: Tennesseans Remembering the Holocaust.

Living On is a project of the Tennessee Holocaust Commission, which is funded by an annual appropriation from the Tennessee State Legislature and by private donations. Assistance in the development of this documentary project was provided, as well, by the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, Inc. The traveling exhibition was curated by Susan W. Knowles.

Please visit our website, www.tennesseeholocaustcommission.org, for more information on this and other public outreach programs.

This event is free and open to the public.