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Foto Friday – Edward Kaprov helps splice the ends

Splicing the Ends is the name of a new art exhibition that opens next week, November 28th, at the Amiad Center in Old Jaffa. Over the past two years, Amiad has emerged as a unique center for the arts in Jaffa’s newly revived Flea Market area, now a hot nightlife spot for Tel Aviv’s young bohemian set.

According to the organizers, the exhibit celebrates the winter season festivals for the three major monotheistic religions — Hannuka, Christmas and Eid ul Fitr — by “telling the story of mankind through the different religions… exploring the themes of immigration, living as an individual and as part of a community, and how one relates to oneself and to one’s environment.”

The show features works by over 30 painters, sculptors and photographers , including Edward Kaprov. A veteran immigrant to Israel from the former Soviet Union, Kaprov has worked with Israel’s biggest newspapers including business daily Globes, Haaretz and Yedioth Aharonot. His features have been published by National Geographic, GEO, and Russian Newsweek as well as other publications.

His work on display in “Splicing the Ends” deals with how religion informs day-to-day life in Israel, whether in the army…

…at a soup kitchen for hungry children…

…motivating political protest…

Kaprov’s work ranges from news and commercial photography to personal projects, including a series on Shamanism in Israel.

Splicing the Ends runs from November 28 through December 21 at the Amiad Center. A portion of the proceeds from the exhibit will go to ILAN, Israel’s Foundation for the Handicapped.

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Foto Friday – Reli Avrahami’s “Diary”

Beer Sheva-born Reli Avrahami is one of Israel’s premiere magazine photographers. A new exhibition of her work, “Diary”, will open next week at the Hadassah College in Jerusalem, where she once studied and is now a lecturer.

Avrahami has worked as a freelance portrait photographer since 1986, shooting celebrities, artists and politicians for Israel’s main newspapers and weekend supplements including “Maariv”, “Yediot Aharonot” and “Haaretz” where she is best known for her long-running series of Israeli family portraits.

In “Diary”, Avrahami invites viewers to look in on three generations of her own family: celebrations and tragedies, weddings and funerals, everyday life and unique occasions.

Her daughter – Botticelli curls cascading down her shoulders – en route to a Scout trip…

…the morning of her son’s induction into the IDF…

…her mother, fast asleep in a Netherlands zimmer motel…

or a “Girls Night In” with her sisters and mother.

“Diary” opens at 6:00pm, November 5, 2009 at the Hadassah College, 37 HaNeviim Street, Jerusalem.

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Foto Friday – The Israel Photography Exhibition 2

POV, the Israeli Photography Exhibition at Hatachana, the Old Train Station in Tel Aviv’s Neve Tzedek, came out swinging earlier this month with individual retrospectives of works by well-known Israeli photographers. Additionally, there were also collective exhibitions on view at Hatachana — well worth visiting — and on YouTube. These include works by leading photographers, yet-unknowns and news agencies, the unsung heroes of photography in the field.

Last Summer

Israel Sun photo agency

Tomorrow’s Photographers

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Foto Friday – The Israel Photography Exhibition

POV, a retrospective of new works by Israel’s leading photographers/curators took place this past week at Tel Aviv’s newest landmark, the refurbished old train station structure in Neve Tzedek (pictured left). For those who missed the show (and that includes your humble scribe), POV has provided video portfolios for the group, as well as individual photographers. A portion of these works are presented in this Foto Friday column, with more to follow. Enjoy! And for those who can’t wait, visit the POV website and YouTube channel.

Show Portfolio

Moshe Shay

Yuval Tebol

David Perlov

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Foto Friday – Gabriel Benaim looks at Tel Aviv

Photographer Gabriel Benaim is originally from Panama City and now lives and works in Tel Aviv. He studied philosophy but has in the last six years devoted himself to photography and is currently working on a long term project documenting the city of Tel Aviv on its 100th anniversary.

In this series, Benaim created compositions using the structures of Tel Aviv, the armatures, patterns and textures unique to the city. In his framing, he makes order out of the disorder, sanity out of a crazy hodge-podge.

Benaim is part of a small group of photographers worldwide who still use only traditional photographic materials, i.e. film and silver paper. He works almost exclusively with an 8×10 camera, and prints on silver chloride paper, usually Azo, the last silver chloride paper widely available, as well as its recent replacement, Lodima Fine Art paper.

It provides a range of tones and warmth that suits the Tel Aviv urban landscape as it shimmers and simmers in the hot summer sun.

It’s best to look at Benaim’s pictures full-sized on his website or on his blog, where he posts both explanations about photographic technique and discusses his work. When he began the Tel Aviv series last summer, he writes, he “was obsessed with extreme views from above, be it rooftops, hills, whatever. It was as if I had this visual idea in my head which I had to find somewhere out there…The allure of the high vantage point is fairly obvious, especially for anyone interested in abstraction. Almost anything looks interesting from above, if only because we’re so unused to the perspective.”

Viewed in black in white, rather than its true Technicolor, and from a distance, rather than street level, Benaim gives shape to the ungainly adolescent that is Israel’s biggest city — 100 years young and with a long way yet to grow.

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Foto Friday – Down at the Dead Sea with Shmuel Browns

Canadian-Israeli Shmuel Browns is a licensed tour-guide and artist who uses photography to share his love of nature. A recent exhibit, From the Lowest Place on Earth presented images of the Dead Sea, a miraculous body of salt water whose name belies its true nature.

The region – 420 meters below sea level – possesses unique geographical, biological and historical characteristics, and the sea itself is rich in minerals that, coupled with its stark beauty, have made it a center for spa tourism.

So much for the good news. The bad news is that the Dead Sea is dying or, more accurately put, being killed off. It is shrinking at a rate of 1 meter per year as both Israel and Jordan divert the waters flowing into it, leaving huge mud flats with hundreds of sinkholes that lie in the sun like open wounds crusted with salt.

In his artist’s statement, Browns writes: “Even as the world is rapidly changing, as humanity encroaches, these photographs capture nature in a serene moment. The exhibit explores contrast–between wet and dry, water and desert; the contrast between rock and vegetation, and between the broad horizontal expanse of the Dead Sea and the cliffs and mountains that rise vertically above it; the contrast between nature and human industry.”

This surreal moonscape is Dead Sea Works, a subsidiary of Israel Chemicals, a multibillion dollar industry and part of the lifeblood of Israel’s economy. Shutting it down isn’t an option for the immediate future but a comprehensive integrated development plan for the entire region has been proposed by Friends of the Earth Middle East (FoEME).

Last summer, Browns had the opportunity to show these images of the lowest place on earth in a Katmandu gallery, in the shadow of the highest mountains on earth. The exhibit can be found online on his Facebook page.

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Foto Friday – Sharon Bareket’s redheads squint in the hot noonday sun

Mention red hair and most people will think of Ireland or Scotland. And indeed, those two countries have the highest per capita number of redheaded people. But Israel, too, has its share of fair-skinned Gingers — and that’s not counting the extraordinary number of Israeli women who favor fluorescent orange over blonde from the bottle.

Photographer Sharon Bareket’s new exhibit, entitled Melano-Mental Photography – Touches of Light/Skin, at the Tavi Dresdner Gallery in Tel Aviv’s funky Neve Tzedek neighborhood, is a series of large-format images of red-heads – from strawberry blonde to vibrant titian – squinting and sweltering in the hot Mediterranean sun. Which begs the question, what are these people doing here?

“The light skin, the translucent eyelashes, the sun-blinded gaze, eyes all but closed, demarcates a closed circle, loaded with painful meaning in the political, cultural, linguistic and erotic contexts,” writes Doron Rabina in the gallery notes.

The photos are about Israeli identity: the people in the pictures are native-born sabras yet they appear as aliens in their surroundings.

But pity not the poor redhead! The photos do not take into account the fiery temperament that characterizes them; throughout the ages, from King David to Boudica, Queen Elizabeth I to Thomas Jefferson, there have been red-haired heroes.

Maybe what Israel needs right now is a redhead to lead us, though there doesn’t seem to be one coming up in time for the February elections.

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Foto Friday – White Nights with Tiranit Barzilay Cohen

Last night was the first in Tel Aviv’s summer series of “White Night” events – all night happenings featuring outdoor concerts on Rothschild Boulevard and on the beach, discounts at restaurants and cafes, performances, and more.

There was also an opening, at the Sommer Contemporary Art gallery of photographer Tiranit Barzilay Cohen’s latest work – her first show in a decade. Barzilay photographs her subjects using minimal direction and set against a white studio background, to explore existential themes: life, death and the human condition.

The full exhibit may be viewed online at the gallery website.

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