Reese Turns Koplan’s Family History into Art

Director of The Westminster School’s performing arts Adam Koplan mused that he’s always impressed with his “accomplished and incredible’ colleagues and found himself stimulated by the visual interplay of the deep rich blue of the cyanotypes with old black-and-white photos along with cosmic symbols credited to Black artist Michael Reese, a Westminster digital arts and photography teacher.

Koplan explained, “Somehow, I had taken for granted all the places that I had seen of Reese’s work … like the embedded text that somehow relates to the figures in his photographs … like putting the pieces of the puzzle together to understand Reese’s body of work.”

Some of Reese’s professional works that Koplan admired include an outsized photograph of a jazz festival, a permanent downtown public art window, large-scale pieces at a Summerhill eatery, and a wall-size plexiglass display in Terminal T at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport.

Koplan proceeded to chat up Reese about the depiction of Koplan’s family in the subject of a piece where, like so many African Americans, hardships were faced that were not always talked about openly. Reese spoke about how photographs, and even written letters, only reveal the surface level of the world his family inhabited.

“A surface that still conjures a whole cosmos,” Koplan related. “These ‘blueprints’ are like maps of lives that hint that tiny bits of info can deliver a more nuanced whole picture. Reese’s work was so damn cool. Maybe I could commission him to make a piece for me about my family. After the sale of some comic books, I felt I could pull it off.”

The resulting piece was the ultimate collaboration. All the artistry was Reese’s, but Koplan combed through his family materials to tell the visual story with a lot of give-and-take. Koplan’s father’s mother’s family came from Ciechanow, Poland. Most of that branch settled in Atlantic City, N.J. A few years ago, just before COVID, Koplan’s father, Dr. Jeffrey P. Koplan, former director of the Centers for Disease Control, found a postcard that reminded them that several family members from that Atlantic City wing stayed behind in Poland. Great aunt, Sura Dena, in the late 1930s, was writing to alert the Atlantic City family that cousin, Binem, was coming to visit the U.S.

While sleuthing, Koplan discovered that Binem had many reunions with the family in Atlantic City. The cousins and siblings urged them to immigrate to America ASAP. They didn’t. Everyone (except one who escaped to Israel) who stayed in Poland was murdered.

In Reese’s “Koplan” piece, the first panel depicts Koplan’s great-grandparents, integrated with the great-grandmother’s immigration documents. In the next panel, the photograph and the Yiddish script come from the postcard Koplan’s father found. In the final panel are forms from Yad Vashem indicating Cousin Binem’s murder in the Warsaw ghetto, with a vibrant picture of him and his wife and child when they were thriving.

Koplan explained, “Part of my collaboration with Michael was wrapping my head around whether I wanted to display people who met with such a tragic end in my own domestic spaces. He helped me process that if it were me, I’d want to be remembered, seen, and thought of in my prime. Having a picture of them displayed would honor their memory, which is surely my intent. The piece now sits on the wall in our living room. Now, I need to sell more comics so we can do something equally deep, though on different and likely happier subjects, with my wife’s side of the family.”

L’dor Va Dor: Koplan’s daughter is one of a few Jewish girls in an American Jewish Committee program, The Jewish Black Teen Initiative, finding connections with the Black community.

Koplan serves as a board trustee of the Breman Museum & Cultural Center as well as the director of performing arts for The Westminster School. Koplan was featured in AJT’s Chai Style (“Koplan is King of the Arts,” June 28, 2023.)