First Portfolio

This collection contains Abraham Menashe's earliest set of images—a first song—whose lyrics he would nurture for a lifetime. The images, a prelude to future work, inaugurated an artistic-spiritual commitment towards casting light on humanity’s plight and celebrating its promise.


We encounter an autistic boy trapped in silence, a Hare Krishna disciple in a moment of bliss, a runaway teen peering into our eyes, a teacher comforting a despondent child. Each subject would be explored in later years to become a book on its own—with titles like, Inner Grace, The Face of Prayer, Tompkins People, Couples, and The Healing Moment.


Among the fifty black-and-white photographs, we find a couple embracing at New York City’s very first Gay Pride Parade, the silhouette of an elderly woman facing uncertainty, a homeless man with outstretched arms, like a crucifix, near children at play—images that reach beyond a concern for society’s outcasts, the poor, and the mentally ill, to define a unique genre of photography infused with Menashe's personal theology.


Abraham Menashe's theology points audiences "to the generosity of a universe, ready to redeem those willing to be awakened, educate those yearning to be informed, and comfort those thirsting to be consoled."