"My own use of the camera began in 1954 as I started to think about what a new building in New York - the Seagram building - could be. While in Rome during Easter, through the lens of a camera I had hardly used, I began to observe the quality of buildings: how they sat on the land, their articulation, and how architectural details related to a building as a whole." - Phyllis Lambert This curiosity is a constant in the work of Phyllis Lambert, who has devoted her career to studying and engaging with the changing conditions of urban landscapes. In this collection of personal photographs taken over several decades during her daily routines, her travels, or at work, obser- vation turns into a quest to understand and reveal what might otherwise remain overlooked.

A young girl's odyssey from birth to young adult growing up on a farm from 1934 to 1950 in upstate New York

The Ben Ezra Synagogue, in Cairo, is best known as the synogogue in which the 'Cairo Geniza' was found--an astonishingly rich store of ancient books, manuscripts, correspondences, and records dating back to the tenth century. Copiously illustrated with plans, engravings, and photographs, "Fortifications and the Synagogue" describes the recent restoration of this ancient synagogue, as well as the historical and archaeological research essential to its preservation and to an understanding of the religious communities that founded modern Cairo. The work is unprecedented in its comprehensive examination of the subject, presenting the first measured survey and photographic study of the fortress and synagogue, the first thorough study of the Geniza manuscripts, and a complete history of the synagogue from the Geniza period to the present.