STREET UNDERDOGS

While wandering the streets my eye is always drawn to mundane details in the urban environment - unimportant, negligible, easy to ignore or even plain ugly things and places. I find them rather than seek them. I like to call them “street underdogs” and take them out of their ordinary context in an attempt to make them remarkable in some way, or even to beautify them. These street underdogs often include some traces of human presence or byproducts of human activity, but the humans themselves are not present in the frame, which leaves those newly observed traces open to interpretation.

RANDOMNESS IS HARD TO ACHIEVE

I am fascinated by randomness. These photos are not completely random, of course, as I did frame each photo one way rather than the other, but it would certainly be very hard to achieve anything similar by deliberate design of the scene.

POWER LUNCH

This series came about while I was participating in an artists’ workshop on environmental issues in 2008. Back then the headlines went on for a little while about a world food crisis. Some people who looked at the photos said that there was nothing to do about it - wherever there are humans there will be rubbish and what on earth can you do with a banana peel? But none of it is rubbish, of course. Those peels are perfectly good compost material and that bread could have been kept in the freezer. Another reaction I got about those photos was that they “elevate” the food and give it some kind of an aura. I like the idea of giving our resources the respect that they deserve. Almost everywhere in Tel Aviv you can find food thrown away in the street. It is part of the natural fabric of this rather dirty city and it is easy to ignore, even when the headlines panic about a food crisis.

Some of these photos were included in my workshop final project and exhibited in a group exhibition in Jerusalem in September-October 2009 (“No Ladders to the Stars”)

HOME IS ANYWHERE

Houses at various stages of decay are not rare in Tel Aviv. There is usually nothing attractive or appealing about these facades, it is quite easy to pass them by, until the traces of human presence attract the eye.

This series was shot over a period of four years in various parts of the “White City”, some in poor areas and some gentrified areas that are becoming increasingly unaffordable to most people.

I did not set out to document these houses as such, but was intrigued by the way urban aesthetics in the city correlate with the suffocating political environment in which people live in Israel. I find a general sense of helplessness and lack of control in what should be a safe and stable home.

Minimal Abstracts

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