A photographer spotlighted Holocaust survivors by pairing them with celebrities in moving portraits

Business Insider

24-04-2025

Photographer Bryce Thompson paired Holocaust survivors with celebrities in intimate portraits.
The "Borrowed Spotlight" project aims to leverage celebrities' fame to amplify survivors' stories.
Celebrity participants included Cindy Crawford, Barbara Corcoran, Sheryl Sandberg, and Billy Porter.
Fashion photographer Bryce Thompson has worked with supermodels and shot numerous magazine covers and ad campaigns. For his latest photo series, he trained his camera on a different subject: aging Holocaust survivors.
The "Borrowed Spotlight" project pairs celebrities and business leaders with Jewish survivors of the Holocaust, capturing heartfelt moments of connection and amplifying their testimonies to combat antisemitism and all forms of hate.
Famous participants who lent their public platforms to the project include "Shark Tank" star and real estate mogul Barbara Corcoran, former Meta COO Sheryl Sandberg, supermodel Cindy Crawford, and actors Jennifer Garner, Billy Porter, and David Schwimmer.
The photos are on display for a limited time at Detour Gallery in New York City, but are also available as a coffee table book. Proceeds from the book and print sales benefit Holocaust education and resources for survivors.
Take a look at photos from "Borrowed Spotlight."
Fashion photographer Bryan Thompson took intimate portraits of celebrities meeting Holocaust survivors for a project entitled "Borrowed Spotlight."
Thompson didn't introduce the celebrities and survivors before the photo shoot so that he could photograph their first moments meeting each other.
"This initiative paired celebrities and notable individuals from diverse industries with survivors not just to spread the message but to engage directly — listening, questioning, and sharing in these profound experiences," he wrote in the coffee table book's introduction.
The project aims to leverage celebrities' fame to amplify the stories of aging Holocaust survivors.
Photos from "Borrowed Spotlight" will be on display at Detour Gallery in New York City through April 27.
A full list of the exhibition hours can be found on Borrowed Spotlight's official website.
The "Borrowed Spotlight" coffee table book retails for $360, with the proceeds going to Holocaust education programs.
Cindy Crawford wrote the foreword to the photo book and posed with 98-year-old Ella Mandel.
Crawford wrote that meeting Mandel, who was 13 years old when German forces invaded Poland in 1939, was "profoundly inspiring."
"She shared the heartbreaking losses she endured: her sister, her father, her mother, and another sister — all gone. She was the only survivor in her family," Crawford wrote. "She told me how, at her lowest point, her friend's brother told her, 'No more death. We're getting married.' They did, and they built a life together in the United States."
Thompson photographed tears streaming down Kat Graham's face as she listened to Yetta Kane's story.
Kane's blonde hair and blue eyes, which the Nazis viewed as traits of a superior race, allowed her to work as a courier for Jewish resistance groups known as partisans when she was 8 years old.
"We're here to tell the story," Kane told Graham, an actor best known for her role on "The Vampire Diaries." "That's what's important."
Scooter Braun sat down for a conversation with Joseph Alexander, 103, whose number tattoo from a concentration camp was visible on his arm.
Born in 1922, Alexander endured the Warsaw Ghetto and 12 concentration camps, including Auschwitz and Dachau, before he was liberated in 1945. He was the only surviving member of his family out of his parents and five siblings.
Alexander visited Dachau in 2023 to mark the 78th anniversary of the liberation of the camp.
"I want to be in this shape at 103," Braun said as he sat with Alexander.
Former Meta COO Sheryl Sandberg shared a tender moment with George Elbaum.
Elbaum's mother helped him evade Nazi persecution by paying Catholic families to take him in and conceal his Jewish identity.
"It's an amazing thing to go through what you've been through, or to see life and be able to be an optimist," Sandberg told Elbaum.
"It is the only way I survived it," he said.
Tova Friedman told Barbara Corcoran that she survived Auschwitz at age 6 because a gas chamber malfunctioned.
"We, the survivors, have an obligation not only to remember those that were slaughtered so ruthlessly, but also to warn and teach that hate begets hate and killing more killing," Friedman said.
Thompson photographed Billy Porter with Bella Rosenberg, who was one of only 140 Jews to survive from her Polish hometown of 20,000.
"If you don't tell your story, people won't know," 95-year-old Gabriella Karin told Jennifer Garner.
A 25-year-old lawyer hid Karin and her family for nine months in his one-bedroom apartment across the street from a Nazi outpost.
Thompson hopes that the photo series helps combat modern antisemitism and all forms of prejudice and hate.
"These survivors stand as living testaments, urging us never to forget that empathy and action are often the difference between life and oblivion," Thompson wrote.