{"id":2326,"date":"2025-05-22T15:57:54","date_gmt":"2025-05-22T04:57:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/reviewmeplease.com\/?p=2326"},"modified":"2025-11-12T16:24:27","modified_gmt":"2025-11-12T05:24:27","slug":"through-her-lens-chen-schimmel-captures-the-soul-of-a-nation-in-grief","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/reviewmeplease.com\/?p=2326","title":{"rendered":"Through Her Lens: Chen Schimmel Captures the Soul of a Nation in Grief"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Jerusalem Post Conference: Spotlight- Chen G Schimmel\" width=\"580\" height=\"326\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/I6_11Fw3xfI?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>By: Aaron Herman<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>At this year\u2019s <em>Jerusalem Post Conference<\/em> in New York, I had the chance to meet Chen Schimmel\u2014a 25-year-old photojournalist whose work doesn\u2019t just capture images, it captures essence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>There\u2019s a belief in photography that when you take a picture, you take a piece of someone with you. After spending time with Chen and experiencing her work, I can say with certainty: her photographs don\u2019t just call out to you\u2014they <em>transport<\/em> you. They pull you into a dimension where time is paused and emotion is eternal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Following the October 7 Hamas massacre, Chen couldn\u2019t sit still. \u201cI had to go,\u201d she told me. That sense of urgency led her to Be\u2019eri, one of the hardest-hit communities, alongside her father, a ZAKA volunteer. What she found there was devastation frozen in time. \u201cThe streets were silent. Bikes lay where children had dropped them. Life had been frozen mid-motion, then shattered.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Two haunting images from Be\u2019eri form the emotional core of her upcoming book, <em>Holy Work<\/em>. One captures a ZAKA volunteer collecting blood with what Chen describes as \u201creverence.\u201d The other\u2014titled <em>God\u2019s Rays and Buckets<\/em>\u2014shows two members of the Haran family kneeling in the ruins of their home. \u201cYou see the darkness,\u201d Chen told me. \u201cAnd yet, the light is there.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But her lens didn\u2019t stop there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>She continued documenting funerals of soldiers, each frame holding unbearable weight. And then there was the image that stopped <em>me<\/em> in my tracks\u2014a photograph of Jon Polin and Rachel Goldberg-Polin, parents of hostage Hersh Goldberg-Polin. It was unlike anything I had seen before.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Chen shared the story behind it. \u201cI don\u2019t usually do staged photos,\u201d she explained. \u201cRachel asked, \u2018What should I do?\u2019 I told her, \u2018Just do what you feel.\u2019\u201d What followed was a moment of raw humanity\u2014Rachel collapsed into Jon\u2019s arms. The embrace was fierce, maternal, shattered. It told the story of a lioness in anguish, stripped bare by relentless grief.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I asked Chen what she hopes people take away from her work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cI want my images to leave a mark,\u201d she said. \u201cI want them to tell the truth\u2014so no one can ever say these atrocities didn\u2019t happen.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Chen Schimmel is more than a photojournalist. She\u2019s a visual witness, a truth-teller, and a fierce guardian of memory. Through her lens, we don\u2019t just see the tragedy\u2014we <em>feel<\/em> it, we remember it, and we are called to never forget.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By: Aaron Herman At this year\u2019s Jerusalem Post Conference in New York, I had the chance to meet Chen Schimmel\u2014a 25-year-old photojournalist whose work doesn\u2019t just capture images, it captures essence. There\u2019s a belief in photography that when you take a picture, you take a piece of someone with you. After spending time with Chen [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[88],"tags":[1405,1406],"class_list":["post-2326","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-events","tag-chen-schimmel","tag-jpost"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/reviewmeplease.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2326"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/reviewmeplease.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/reviewmeplease.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/reviewmeplease.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/reviewmeplease.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2326"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/reviewmeplease.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2326\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2337,"href":"http:\/\/reviewmeplease.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2326\/revisions\/2337"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/reviewmeplease.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2326"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/reviewmeplease.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2326"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/reviewmeplease.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2326"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}