fototazo: Yoav Horesh Selects

The premise here is simple: to ask a curator, blogger, editor, photographer or other person involved in contemporary photography to select five portfolios of work that they are currently excited about to recommend to the rest of us, placing emphasis - ideally - on work that hasn't seen heavy rotation online. The portfolios are not presented in any sort of order.

The series comes from a belief that the Internet has a tendency to briefly cohere around certain projects and, longer-term, establish its own canon of photographers, distinct and separate from the gallery and museum canons.

While these dynamics have advantages, they also have the expense of promoting a limited number of projects on a large scale, frequently overshadowing other projects equal in quality. This series, then, seeks in particular to look for great photography that counterbalances heavily distributed projects. It also is part of a general interest I have for this site to go behind the limits of my single vision, personal knowledge and time.

Today's guest is Yoav Horesh who has added an introductory text below. His biography follows at the end of the post. For previous posts in this series, please see the site links page.

Nataly Castaño helped organize this post.

______________________________

During Typhoon (#2), Hong Kong 2012 © Yoav Horesh

Yoav Horesh: I started photographing at an early age, but not until I received formal photography instruction in high school and college did I hear from my teachers about the "importance of choosing a project or a style" to distinguish myself as an artist/photographer from others.

I was taught about "street photographers" and landscape photographers, about those who work very close to their subject matter vs. those who prefer to stay at a distance. I met people who make their own cameras, their own chemicals and create prints with a certain "look" in order to distinguish their work from others whether it is a technical difference, a matter of approach or a decision about a conceptual framework they have adopted. For years I struggled to define my own "style" knowing that I love and have been making photographs of many different subject matters (from people to buildings, from landscape to seascape to underwater, etc.) in different "styles" and approaches as I was influenced by many excellent photographers I met and learned about. Ten years ago, realizing that this struggle undermines my work and sometimes prevents me from photographing, I stopped trying to control what I photograph (subject matter), how I photograph (style) and with what type of camera I work with. Since then, I have been working constantly with several formats in B/W and color, depending on the specific project I am working on. Any technical restrictions I have such as access, light or time will be considered in deciding on the camera or approach, as well as other considerations that are out of my control like film format availability or broken equipment.

For "fototazo Selects" I chose five photographers from different backgrounds and interests who created five projects in Europe, Israel and Central Asia concerning history, conflict, the landscape and humanity. These selections are fine examples of in-depth research and well made photographs that utilize photography in different ways to discuss and present personal points of view, though consistent with my pluralistic interests in contemporary photography.

______________________________

Galit Julia Aloni is an Israeli photographer living and working in Tel Aviv, Israel. In her series "Rereading the Land," she is striving to photograph landscapes with fresh eyes that are not tinted with political turmoil, border shifts and definitions. She is looking at them just "as a place" until the familiar and the unfamiliar entangle.

______________________________

Doron Altaratz is a visual artist, photographer and new media researcher based in Jerusalem. In his series "Visions of Heaven and Hell," using video and still images, Doron explores the relationship between the holy and the mundane in what he refers to as "apocalyptic images." These were created around Israel and specifically in the small triangular area in Jerusalem of the Military Cemetery, "The Nation's Greatest Leaders Cemetery" and The Holocaust Museum that commemorate the Zionist ethos.

______________________________

Dr. Dana Arieli is an academic researcher, a photographer and a scholar of many talents and topics. In her recent book "The Nazi Phantom: A Journey Following the Relics of the Third Reich" Arieli is on a scholarly and personal journey through the Nazi landscape, architecture and product design. Arieli's deep interests in European history, Israeli art, the psychology of trauma and how they all are connected are essentially rooted in her own family history and identity between Europe and Israel.

______________________________

Dean C.K. Cox is a Hong Kong- and Sweden-based editorial photojournalist and documentary photographer. In the Series "Diktat: Living Under Lukashenko" Dean is telling a visual story of the devastating conditions and the hardship of millions who have lived under the Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko since 1994. Lukashenko is serving one of the longest continuous leaderships of a post-Soviet nation, labeled by many western politicians as "Europe's last dictator."

______________________________

Justyna Mielnikiewicz is a freelance photographer based in Tbilisi, Georgia. Widely published, she has been working mainly in the countries of the former Soviet Union. I was recently asked to write a review of her latest book "A Woman With a Monkey - Caucasus in Short Notes and Photographs" which introduced me to her work. Justyna impressed me with her book and her ways of weaving her personal experiences with the events and people's stories of wherever she photographed.

______________________________

Born in Jerusalem, Israel, Yoav Horesh has exhibited internationally in galleries and museums including in Germany, Italy, Israel, the United States, Hong Kong, Myanmar and also with Amnesty International. Yoav's work was featured, written on and published in magazines, art journals and websites across three continents and he has given public lectures/artists talks in art schools, universities and galleries in the United States and Europe.

Yoav's work is included in many private and public collections including The Addison Gallery for American Art and The Museum of New Art in Michigan. Horesh has received various awards, commissions and grants including the Agnes Martin Award, The Projektraum-Bahnhof25 residency award and the Mortimer Frank Grant.

Since completing his MFA from Columbia University in 2005, Yoav has been teaching and photographing in the United States, Hong Kong, Europe and in Israel.

8.26.2014

Yoav Horesh Selects