ANNA YAM

Werner Herzog was once asked in an interview which disability he is most afraid of. He replied “losing one’s legs” – that is, the inability to reach places that can be reached only on foot. In this exhibition, I wanted to examine photographers who go out, roam about, wander, and “get dirty”; photographers for whom wandering about with the camera is something almost existential, like inhaling and exhaling, an action reminiscent of bodily functions, like a pulse, a blink, a hiccup; an unexplained response that comes out as a photograph. I wanted to wander about with them, to breathe with them, to track their movement in space.

Itai Eisenstein roams the cities of the world, but everywhere he goes, he himself awaits, an encounter that results in images of the town and of ghosts. Youval Hai manages to be a tourist – even if only fleetingly – in the ocher landscapes of Israel, and turns them in his photographs into a sensual texture that conveys a memory. Dana Lev Levnat causes strangers to stop, drop everything, and spread their tails like peacocks in front of the camera. Eyal Fried trespasses and sneaks into abandoned construction sites, to discover that they, too, are imprisoned in an endless present. Etty Schwartz directs the camera to corners and ceilings, and carves out, from fleeting moments, images of a heft that the photographic paper can hardly bear.

Work on the exhibition was carried out mostly during the COVID-19 lockdowns. The photographed places struck me as possibilities of a place, like a mirage, like daydreams – distant and inaccessible. It may be a group exhibition, but each of its participants is like a planet onto itself. The word planet in Greek means “migration.” I was happy to deviate a bit from my route and peek into a lively and vibrant work process, and be affected. It is a bit of a lament-and-envy exhibition: a lament for this type of photography and this spontaneous, privileged, quietly rebellious mood; and envy of the organic nature of the photographic act in the hands of the photographers on view here. While direct photography takes them to places, the world isolates with them.