Examples of the photographic work of my father, Leo Lapidus(1923-2001), may be viewed here. Leo Lapidus was a talented amateur photographer. During his army experience in WWII, he served (1943-5) in the Persian Gulf Command (in the rather drab position of telephone operator) and had many opportunities to photograph the region extensively. His work, meticulously labeled, lay in storage till after his death. At that time, two volumes of his letters from such topical places as Basra, Baghdad, and pre-Israel Palestine, along with a substantial quantity of photographs and negatives, were offered to Jeff Spurr, the curator of the Islamic Art archive at the Fogg collection at Harvard University. The collection, documenting a region of poignant meaning today, was of great interest to him. In the not-too-distant future, when the collection is fully catalogued, look for a link to the Harvard University Collection for a look at his photographs of Iran, Iraq, and Palestine taken during WW II (Opening 2005?).

Jacob Lapidus (1888-1974), my grandfather, was a portrait photographer of some accomplishment in Russia at about the turn of the last century.I have been told that in Russia he had achieved some renown, and was even permitted to travel outside of the Jewish Pale of Settlement to photograph Russian nobility. In this country as an immigrant, he eventually joined the capmakers' union and worked in a factory. Only a couple of examples of his work survive (glass negatives and all). One of the pieces seems to predate the surrealist movement by several years!