The inspiration for the series Studies came from two events in the history of photography. One of these is the 1869 publication of the first pedagogical photography guidebook, Henry Peach Robinson’s ‘Pictorial Effect in Photography’*. In this book Robinson establishes his guidelines for photographic observation, coins the convention of ‘pictorial photography’, and determines the rules for representation. My other inspiration is a new role the photographic medium took on in the 1970s in the US, as it was used to document the ‘Earth Art’ movement. This development led photography to become part of conceptual art and the postmodernist discourse. In this project I consider different readings of landscape, its interpretations and narratives, the photographic conventions used to represent it, and its interaction with the viewer. I use images of the Israeli desert as case studies, also bearing in mind the history of Zionist photography. I disassembled my photographs, rebuilt them as a three dimensional sculptural installations, and re-photographed these against the marble-like background of a kitchen laminate surface – aspiring to create a renewed narrative.

(2016)

* Robinson, H.P. (1869). Pictorial Effect in Photography: Being Hints On Composition and Chiaroscuro for Photographers. London: Piper & Carter.