Everyone is present

In this book, Kurgan begins with a family snapshot made by her Polish grandfather in 1939 on the eve of the war. Presenting this evocative image as a repository of multiple histories--public, private, domestic, familial and generational--she sets off on a series of meditations on photography that give us startling insights into how photographs work: what they conceal, how they mislead, what provocations they contain.Each essay takes up the thread of the story of her family's epic journey across Europe as they flee--country by country--Nazi occupation, until they reach Cape Town, South Africa.…