Foto Friday – The Israel Photography Exhibition
Filed under: Art, Foto Friday, General, History and Culture, Pop Culture
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
Foto Friday – Gabriel Benaim looks at Tel Aviv
Filed under: Art, Foto Friday, General, History and Culture, Travel
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.
Foto Friday – Tel Aviv Port
Filed under: Art, Foto Friday, General, History and Culture, Travel
Conde Nast’s Concierge.com just named Tel Aviv tops on its “It List 2009” and about time too. Each year, Concierge “comb[s] the globe looking for the emerging places that will be on everybody’s lips two years from now”. So how great is it to already be in a place “that will make you feel all right about the world again”. Great indeed.
Photographer Hanoch Grizitzky has captured the Tel Aviv’s enchantment and energy in a series of images of the old port and its new boardwalk in the rain. The image above is of the walkway and, looming in the background, the Reading Power Plant — a historic Modernist building whose tower was once accurately described by an old boyfriend as “the phallus of Tel Aviv”. Reading is now garishly draped in colored lights because we are the party city.
Winter isn’t the most fashionable time to travel, but it has its advantages: the city air feels fresh, there aren’t a lot of tourists, and people are calmer, (relatively speaking – this is Israel, of course), in the absence of the summer swelter. The disadvantages are that it sometimes rains and gets dark very early, but these elements have their charms as well.
Grizitzky freelances for leading Israeli news publications such as Yediot Aharonot, Globes, women’s mag La-Isha, entertainment rag Pnai Plus and others, photographing objects of beauty – be they desert flowers or spokesmodels. “My starting point is love of photography and beautiful things come from there,” he says. “Like the hummus commercial says, ‘Do it out of love or don’t do it at all.’”
These small format images don’t begin to do justice to Grizitzky’s works, particularly this panoramic view. For a better look, visit his website and picture gallery.
Foto Friday – White Nights with Tiranit Barzilay Cohen
Filed under: Art, Foto Friday, General, Israeliness, Life, Pop Culture
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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