Amos and Merav
Curator - Tamar Elul
This exhibit is a presentation of the process of loss and separation. It shifts between the universal and the personal. It intertwines photographs, captions, and the experiences they portray. The exhibit conveys the portrait of a loved one, the phases of bereavement, and the bond between a father and a daughter. Photographs, captions, and the experiences embedded in a portrait of a loved one, phases of bereavement, and the bond between a father and a daughter.
After a person dies, his relatives fill the vacuum with memories. This exhibit may be seen as a temporary monument to the life of Amos, composed of pictures, thoughts, and memories. It is a memorial to the process of memory, separation, and acceptance. Merav draws anecdotes from Amos’ life to sketch his persona. His work and his worldview are revealed in the photographs he took and the anecdotes Merav shares. It is a portrait of a man, a father and a photographer. A specific culture, values and an era emerge from the pictures and words.
The exhibit traces what remains of a person after his death. These elements are the enclosed in objects, pictures, and relationships with his relatives and the transformation that occur.
In addition to being father and daughter, they shared the love of photography, and their shared passion also revealed the differences between them. Their love to photography connect them yet they each retained their individuality. Their relationship is also expressed in the dialogue between the photographs, most of which were taken by Amos and the texts that were edited by Merav. She appropriated Amos’ work and imbued them with her experience, a process similar to the preserving and constructing the memory of the image of the departed character. The mediation, the passage of time and the act itself create a new experience.
The photographic art club 2019
Yesterday I saw
(Part Two of the Exhibit)
Curator - Adi Angel
The images presented in the exhibit occupy the space between what is, and what is no more, and what remains.
Merav Stark offers photographs taken by her late father alongside her own photographs and texts. The connection between the images in the photographs her father took in his lifetime, alongside Merav’s photographs and texts, creates a space within a time and place which documents the complex process of coping with loss. It is said that a person continues to exist as long as we remember him.
This concept is given expression in different cultures in varied ways. After all, memory is also a cultural construct, which has been assigned a new dimension since photography was invented. In its essence, photography is a sign /signal of an experience, or a form of proof of an event that once occurred, and as such, it perpetuates, summons tells and evokes memories. From the invention of photography in the 1930s, through to the present, commemorative forms, such as photo albums, archives, and museums, were created and developed to preserve the photographs and memories of the past. “What the Photograph reproduces to infinity has occurred only once”, writes theoretician Ronald Barthes in his book, Thoughts about Photography (published in Hebrew by Keter in 1980) “The Photograph mechanically repeats what could never be repeated existentially”. Barth, whose writing focuses on the impact of the photograph on the viewer (in contrast to the photographer or person being photographed), is engaged in the emotional experience that the photograph evokes. The camera allows the fragments of the visual memories to be gathered, and they become the raw material for forming memories.
Adi Angel- about the exhibit
Yad LeBanim gallery 2019