After 1917 Photograph

Orit Ishay After 1917, 2013 cut and woven photography, archival pigment print 167x132 cm. one of a kind The work centers on a photograph of a Gobelin tapestry, maker and owner unknown. During my childhood, the story told was that it was woven as a gift for General Allenby prior to his departure from the Hold Land but was ultimately kept by others here. The photograph was magnified and printed, each stitch becoming an enlarged pixel, and the image itself transformed into an experimental space, a kind of surgical theatre or laboratory where simple analog applications of deconstruction and assembly have been applied, in contrast to the "smart" apps of computer software, such as Photoshop. The image was econstructed through painstaking and meticulous work lasting many months, the photo paper cut with a surgeon's scalpel into thin strips of a width equal to the pixels appearing in the enlarged format. The strips were then reconnected and plaited into a compilation comprised of information units, with the minute deviation from the original completed after calculation and planning, thus casting the photograph in its new image. Manually cutting apart and then pasting a photograph in the 21st century, when computers and their range of possibilities and options are so available, immediate and accepted, may seem an oddity. For me, this is clearly a test of revelation, an act of magic that occurs in the dark room, an hour in which a sheet of photo paper is slipped into chemicals to gradually allow a blurred image to emerge, one that clarifies and sharpens until developed in full. When the figure is completely present, one is then free to discuss it. This alternative view of the image and its representation, its new aesthetic appearance, the display of the "sublime" – all these question the ability today to see what was, the particular point on the continuum of history and time, and the debate terms and their repercussions on contemporary photography.

Photography:Photo on Paper

Original:One-of-a-kind Artwork

Size:52 W x 65.7 H x 0 D in

Delivery Time:Typically 5-7 business days for domestic shipments, 10-14 business days for international shipments.