Gregory Michenaud (France,1975) is a freelance Cracow-based photographer specializing in documentary and story-telling. He is a member of the Association of Polish Art Photographer (ZPAF), graduated from Sputnik Mentorship program in 2013 and a participant of the VII Masterclass 2016-2017.
He has been published in numerous magazines in Europe with also few individual and collective exhibitions in France, England, Poland and Slovakia. He obtained numerous awards and distinctions such as a 2nd place in Prix de la Photo Paris (Px3) and a 3rd prize in International Photo Awards (IPA).
About ‘Yibbum’:
On-going project on the story of a grandson of a “Yibbum child” – it means of a child coming from the Jewish tradition of levirate marriage – in the search of his identity.
Born as Jewish, he was living and educated as a not-Jewish by parents with a post-Holocaust trauma. They always told him that history is repeating itself but this time, he has not to fear anymore, as he has a country to escape: Israel.
Time has passed as his fears till the moment that he was told again to hide his Jewish identity. He decided that it was time to define what it could mean to him.
This is about his attempt to define his own identity through learning religion, going closer to the religious part of his family and discovering “his” land, Israel and Morocco – where his family is coming from.
Yibbum (Hebrew word for levirate marriage) is a type of marriage which obliges the oldest surviving brother of a man who dies childless to marry the widow of his childless deceased brother, with the firstborn child being treated as that of the deceased brother.
