Portrait Pebbles is a Holocaust remembrance project that seeks to animate the memory of Holocaust victims in the minds of people living today. This is achieved by emphasizing their individuality through the act of drawing and portraiture.  The activity provides participants with a smooth river pebble, a black marker and a printout of a victim’s face. Participants are taught how to ‘look’ at a victim’s face, based on the principles of portraiture and are then invited to take as much time as they want, studying the face, as they draw it onto the pebble. 

             The purpose of Portrait Pebbles is not to create a ‘realistic’ or ‘true’ likeness of the victim. The finished product is sure to be imperfect. Rather, the hope is simply for a living person to spend time looking at the face of a deceased person, in order to reflect upon who they were, and how they lived and died.

            Portrait Pebbles was developed by Dr. Alexandra Karl in  2012, while working at Congregation Kol Ami as an art teacher. Karl is the granddaughter of Holocaust survivors, and her training in the History of Art led her to question the forms that Holocaust memorials take, and the impact of their iconographies.

Interview for online symposium 'Migration, Memory and the Visual Arts: Second Generation Jewish Artists.'

University of Leicester, UK, May 7th, 2021

https://youtu.be/zreIS2CoZH8?si=LlEMHpRWjxM4wnwr&t=1368