AllInfo

“This Place“: International photographers show their image of Israel

admin

12 artists of different Nations were invited to the long-term project “This Place”. The goal: to Israel to explore from a personal angle. Your photo – and video work are now on display in the Jewish Museum.



Initiator Frédéric Brenner is an internationally known photographer, exhibiting itself in galleries and museums. While working on his project “This Place” he did, however, applied many hats, he says in a DW Interview: “I was a Manager, curator, tour Manager, technical assistant, Fundraiser, and much more. For my own work, just a little time sometimes.”

Brenner was born in 1959 in France. As a professional photographer, he devoted himself mainly to Jewish life in Israel and other countries around the world. His best known work is “Diaspora”: for 25 years, he painted a portrait of Jewish communities in more than 40 countries. Topics such as home, belonging, exclusion, community, and religiosity are not employed him only as a photo artist.

No artistic requirements

In 2005, the idea for his ambitious photo project “This Place” matured artist should bring different nationalities, religions, and biographical embossing together. Each was allowed to explore his own cultural and religious Background out of the Land of Israel and its motives to choose for themselves. The subjective view was expressly desired.

Initiator of the project: The photographer Frédéric Brenner

Requirements, both in timing and content, was not it. Only restriction: Israeli and Palestinian photographers should not be there. “We wanted people with a fresh point of view, which are not involved in the daily political conflict in Israel,” says Brenner.

There are many years needed intensive collaboration with the curators and the gallerists burner in New York, to create the artistic concept was. “I knew I would need allies,” said Brenner in a review. “Artists are driven by questions, and their Work can illuminate the cracks and paradoxes.”

Travels in an unknown country: Israel

Twelve internationally renowned photographers and photo artists, burners included, traveled to for the project the Land of Israel. They explored with the camera, the very different Israeli landscapes and, after internal discussion between the project Manager, curator, and participating photographers, the by Israel occupied the West Bank (West Bank).

Abandoned Bedouin settlements in the Israeli Negev desert (photo: Fazal Sheikh/2011)

Of the barren Negev desert in the South through smaller places and historical cities such as Jerusalem, Ramallah, Bethlehem, up to the Golan heights on the border to Syria and on to the coastal city of Tel Aviv, the photographers were on the go. Sometimes alone, sometimes with Team. Your empathic view of Israel showed at the end of a fascinating Puzzle of a multi-religious society and the variegation of this country.

Created a visual Portrait

Some of them were there for the first Time and were able to experience what it means to live a from religiosity and biblical history pervaded the country. All of the participants were able to take the time as much as your photographic excursions required. Was funded the complex project through a Foundation.

Some photographers traveled several times for shorter visits to Israel, others stayed weeks, even months in the country, to deal intensively with the selected protagonists. Her photographs documenting Israel in the years 2009 to 2014, the selection has met each of the artist himself.

Religious life in Israel: The Orthodox Jewish family wine field (photo: Frédéric Brenner/2009)

Frédéric Brenner, it was important to the artistic look from the outside to maintain. Wherein the burner – himself a Jew – as an international photographer with changing residences in Moscow, New York, Israel, and currently in Berlin his artistic subjectivity in the conversation admits. His Work reflects, with almost archaeological precision the places and landscapes of the Soul of this country and its people.

There is no contradiction: technology and tourist places

From the German side of the photo artist Thomas Struth is. The representative of the internationally known “düsseldorf school” has engaged in his journeys to Israel, with religiously and socially-charged locations, such as, for example, the Annunciation Basilica in Nazareth. On his large-scale photographic work of the famous attraction of the martial concrete structure at the ceiling the impression of a military bunker.

Also technologically upgraded High-Tec-places of interest Struth. A futuristic experimental laboratory in the “Plasma Lab” at the Weizmann Institute in Rehovot, where the world-recognized basic medical research gets from the point of view of Struth sculptural trains. “My interest or my intent is to address something on a larger scale, a larger value than the specific Detail,” says he.

Six Times the photographer has traveled to Israel. The image of the abstract-modern architecture of the city hall of Tel Aviv shows more than just the bold facade and much of it resonates here between the lines. At this historic place on 4 was. In November 1995, the then Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was murdered. The light of the dawning twilight surrounds the building with a eerie Aura, all edges überscharf act.

Biblical motives in the Negev desert

Also the US-American photographer Jeff Wall is known for its extremely large format photo panels known. For four decades, he has contributed in the art world, the photography is recognized as an important contemporary art form. For the project “This Place”, he traveled in October 2010 to Israel. In the case of a round trip through Israel’s Negev desert, he discovered the sleeping place of a group of Bedouins who were working as olive pickers on a Farm. For centuries, the Bedouin living in this area, many were relocated by the Israeli government, only a few managed to save their traditions.

“Daybreak”: sleep end of Olive-picking, early in the Morning (photo: Jeff Wall/2011)

A year later, in the fall of 2011, returned the Wall back there and chose a position for his camera. For two weeks he made every Morning before sunrise, a photo of the sleeping Bedouin, in the Background of the nearby prison, in addition to the Israeli olive Farm.

A serial work, which changed only in tiny, almost picturesque nuances. Every day, he developed this photo in a makeshift darkroom in his hotel room. Later, he met the final selection.

His large-format photographic work “Daybreak” hangs in the exhibition in Berlin centrally located at the head end of a room, like a biblical landscape painting from the 17th century. or 18. Century and yet of the highest digital image quality. In the large format Wall captures the delicate colours, just before the day breaks. Everything is equalised by the light mood. Social-critical implications are between the lines.

Artist project with political ambitions

The photographer Frédéric Brenner, who by his own Jewish family background, more of an inside view on the topic of “Israel,” was in “This Place” is not photographic effects, not to cliché images or the journalistic view. Therefore, no photo reporters were invited.

“Unnamed Road”: photographic work of South Korean artist Jungjin Lee, who lives in New York

The twelve professional photographers have dedicated themselves to very special, each with their own aesthetic concepts, the stories behind the facades of the buildings, the people, the religiosity, the official policy of the Israeli – Palestinian conflict. A concept that fits well in the former exhibition, the philosophy of the Berlin Jewish Museum.

These artistic positions, which will be shown after stops in Tel Aviv, Prague and New York now as a guest exhibition in the Jewish Museum in Berlin, drawing a multifaceted picture of the different areas of life in this country. “Israel is a place of radical otherness and radical dissonance,” says Brenner Interview in the DW. “This project also has to do with a kind of polyphony that characterizes the country today. We should understand that we must engage in this polyphony, even in ourselves.”

Surprising resignation of Director

Land mark in Berlin: The Jewish Museum

The issued 200 photo and video works, multi-present religious Israel of various people living in Israel and the West Bank: the Jews, Christians, Muslims, Copts, Druze, Palestinians, and many others. A cosmopolitan, international approach, the Initiator Frédéric Brenner was at the time of selection is important.

The public discussion of the resignation of the current Museum Director, Peter shepherd is superimposed on the perception of these very values, see the guest exhibition at the Jewish Museum currently. First suggestions for a possible successor to the leadership position have appeared in the media.

The international photo project “This Place” is still up to 5. To see January 2020 at the Jewish Museum in Berlin.

Exit mobile version