Ori Gersht

https://www.origersht.com

Ori Gersht was born in Israel in 1967, but has lived in London for over 30 years. Throughout his career his work has been concerned with the relationships between history, memory and landscape. He often adopts a poetic, metaphorical approach to explore the difficulties of visually representing conflict and violent events or histories.

Photography Series

!! To look through properly

Trees

Ghost Olive

For the making of this work I spent a lot of time in Galilee, among trees that were over 500 years old. The olive trees have a unique significance – they symbolise the bond between the farmer and his ancestors and the land. For that reason they are at the forefront of the current territorial disputes.

I took the photographs at midday, when the bright and bleaching sun was hovering mid sky. I overexposed the film by many stops, allowing the harsh and violent sun to attack the film and melt the images of the trees.

Later in the darkroom I attempted to rescue the details and the traces from the overexposed and therefore dense negatives. In contrast to the violent and destructive act of exposure, the images that appeared on the paper were frail, delicate and gentle.

https://www.origersht.com/copy-of-ghost-olive-2003-04

Flowers and fragility

https://www.origersht.com/another-world-2022

https://www.origersht.com/copy-of-fragile-land-2018-1