So It Seems

Micha Bar-Am

Curators: Dana Landau and Gili Zaidman

Design:  Joseph Jibri

16.3.2012 – 31.3.2012 Indie Gallery, Tel Aviv

Seventeen photographs by Israel Prize laureate Micha Bar-Am are positioned on a table in the middle of the gallery. Visitors to the “So It Seems” exhibition are invited to sit around the table, observe the photographs from up close, and even lift and hold in their hands the ones they want to explore, reorganizing the photographs to their hearts’ desire. This closeness is identified with the worktable, or a home coffee table. A line of text encircles the walls of the gallery surrounding the table with the titles of the works and the year they were shot. This information, normally shown in close proximity, is distanced from the photos. It thus becomes possible to distance oneself for a moment from the political significance of each frame and react to the visual. Events the photographer was present at again take on the significance of an image as an image, until they are once again broken down to the point they were taken at Dachau, Pearl Harbor, or another charged situation. The exhibition suggests a different path to reaching Bar-Am’s works and displays the tension between photographic image and textual context.