Artist Blog

Every week an artist whose single image was published by Der Greif is given a platform in which to blog about contemporary photography.

For my last post I'd like to share my MFA thesis project, which is a series that I continue to explore and develop. My sincere thanks again to Der Greif for their ongoing support and for this unique opportunity. General Assembly is the examination of a space that exists between the public and private archives that represent my family history. The lingering online presence of my late grandparents is the anchor for my research. My grandfather was an Israeli diplomat and my grandmother an avid art collector. My role in this project is tripartite: I create as artist, archivist, and curator. The body of work itself is the convergence of these three roles—a series of photographic combinations or collages that vacillate between dualities or contradictions: the public and private, the rational and emotional, and the documentary and interpretive. I search for specific images and objects that relate to the lives of my grandparents, and I follow their trajectory from the home to the Internet, or vice-versa. All types of images in this project are legitimate and of equal value: a snapshot, a fine art photograph, a newspaper clipping, a screenshot of an eBay receipt. I ask the viewer to reflect on the new experience and parameters of the archive, and the lives of photographs as objects in a digital age. www.yaeleban.com