May 10, 2017
When I look at photography I often have strong reactions. I like something a lot or I dislike something enormously. I am in awe of people’s technical skills or wonder about their vision. I admire their choice of subjects or I couldn’t care less.
Rarely am I envious, because I consider myself not a straight photographer, for one, and also still a beginner who has made a conscious decision to forgo systematic education in the art and techniques of photography. So I won’t compare my own work to that of others, and avoid envy.
Peculiarly enough that pattern occasionally breaks: when I see things exhibited that are close to my own pursuits, the resulting images of which lie comfortably dormant on my hard drive instead of being in some shown in some gallery.
I become so, so jealous. I can tell myself over and over that it is not an desirable emotion; that I do not pursue opportunities to show plain photography, that my own work might resemble the style but not the technical accomplishment. That my strength lies in the painterly revision of straight photography in my montage work.
In any case, it’s a quirk, albeit an unsympathetic one, that I feel on these occasion that the world is closed to me. Case in point for this confession: the extraordinary work of Ori Gersht, in detail described in the link below. Suspension between Sky and Water is an apt description of what his images provoke; it was enough to have me go back to my archival folder of Zwischen Himmel und Wasser (between sky and water) and steam.
Lee
Much of the work you are talking about drifts into abstraction … into a realm where there is little (or no) reference to recognizable subjects. In that arena, light, color and illusionistic texture often seem to take on material form … and perhaps most important of all, space becomes a blend of 2-d and 3-d thereby lifting the image and the viewer into a higher plane of consciousness.