Jeannette Flamm Brockman

Jeannette Flamm Brockman, a photographer and former assistant dean at the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Fine Arts, died on Dec. 21 at her home in Haverford, Pa. She was 87.  

Jeannette grew up in New York City and graduated in 1958 from Sarah Lawrence College, where she studied with Joseph Campbell and Maurice Friedman. After a fellowship at Harvard University, she completed her master’s degree in Middle Eastern history at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1961. 

She served on the faculty and staff at the University of Pennsylvania for 25 years. After her time as registrar for the Penn Museum, she raised over $30 million for the university spearheading the renovation campaign for the Furness Building (Fisher Fine Arts Library) and the Eugene Ormandy Music and Media Center. She went on to teach photography for the Graduate School of Education’s Say Yes to Education program for schoolchildren. 

Jeannette served on the board of HIAS Pennsylvania for over 15 years. She photographed refugees from the former Soviet Union and many other countries, detailing their journeys into a new life in the U.S. These images, taken over a three-year period, were part of an exhibit called “Crossing Over.” 

Her passion for photographing landscapes, portraits, and public events inspired the publication of “Prayers at the Gate,” a photographic meditation on the spontaneous memorials and offerings assembled to commemorate 9/11 at Ground Zero in New York City, at El Santuario de Chimayó, N.M., and in Shanksville, Pa. In a 2005 interview with “The Philadelphia Inquirer,” Jeannette called them “shrines of solace.”

“Memory now inhabits the space where forms previously made their mark,” Jeannette wrote in the book. “My photographs speak to those who suffered loss—telling them they were not alone: their grief is shared.” 

In “Along the Trail,” a collection of photographs from some of her favorite hikes throughout the U.S., she used her beachcomber’s eye to find human and animal forms in forests. And in “Windows,” she turned her lens on her home, as well as on commercial and residential sites in Israel, New Mexico, and Maine, to frame walls, remaindered objects, and reflections.

Her photographs are in the permanent collections of the 9/11 Memorial & Museum in New York, the Palace of the Governors Photo Archive at the New Mexico History Museum in Santa Fe, and the Haverford College Archives, among other institutions. Her photographs have been featured in numerous group and solo exhibitions in galleries and museums, including the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the University of Pennsylvania Galleries, Sarah Lawrence College, and the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Museum. 

“It is my hope that my photographs allow the visual to become the visceral so that the heart sees what the eye sees,” she wrote. 

A devoted horticulturalist, she designed her own garden and cultivated it over more than 50 years. She supported arboretums and gardens in Pennsylvania and Maine and delighted in walking the paths every season with her camera in hand. 

Jeannette met her late husband, Bob, in 1957 while studying field archaeology at the University of New Mexico. In the early 1960s, they volunteered in Agadir, Morocco, and in Abruzzi, Italy, to assist with disaster relief efforts. 

She is survived by her two sons, Joshua Brockman, of Haverford, Pa., and George Brockman, of Olympia, Wash.; and by two grandchildren, Felix and Celia. A funeral service was held on Dec. 24 at Temple Beth Hillel-Beth El in Wynnewood, Pa. In lieu of flowers, donations in Jeannette’s memory may be made to HIAS Pennsylvania by calling (215) 832-0900 or visiting https://hiaspa.org.