Helen Aron, photographer and South African art publishing impresario, passed away in Johannesburg on 11th January 2020 after a long illness. Helen was an eccentric, unique Johannesburg character- someone of passion, intelligence, flair and great courage.
Helen was born on 30th November 1939.
She will be well remembered by South Africa's Heritage community. She was a documentary and art photographer of Johannesburg’s disappearing past. We have pieced together a little about Helen’s background.
She was the daughter of immigrant German Jewish parents. Her father Arthur Aron, was born in 1904. One can assume that he sought refuge in South Africa in the 1930s. Helen’s mother was Sofie. Sofie married Arthur in Montagu in the Cape in 1938. Helen was born in 1939 and she had a sister, Lorna, who emigrated to the USA. There is an entry for Helen’s father in South African Jewry, 1965 (page 201). He is described as a “Business Proprietor” and their family address is given as Orapa Mansions, Yeo Street, Yeoville. So Helen was a daughter of Yeoville when it was very much a Jewish suburb with its synagogues and Jewish bakeries and grocery stores along Raleigh and Rockey Street. Helen was unusual in that unlike other Jewish people, she continued to live in this node of Johannesburg - Yeoville, Berea, Hillbrow and Bellevue. She matriculated in 1957 at Barnato Park or as it was more formally known, Johannesburg Girls High School, located in Berea. For a century, this was the the all girls school (of course they were only white girls) of some pre-eminence. It was a fine school, modelled on the belief that girls too should be educated in literature...
