THE LINE AND THE CIRCLE BY SHARONE LIFSCHITZ

The Jewish Museum

http://www.thejewishmuseum.org/

Friday 11 February 2011 to Sunday 21 August 2011

Exhibition previously on at The Jewish Museum in United States

In this video (19 min. 26 sec.), artist Sharone Lifschitz documents a two-week period she spent working with her mother in February 2009. Returning together to the darkroom for the first time in more than twenty years, mother and daughter printed fourteen images, selected by the artist and taken by her mother and other members of Kibbutz Nir Oz.

The photographs, made between 1959 and the early 1980s, depict life in a community whose socialist values represent a particular moment in Israel’s history. The printing of the images is itself an act of nostalgia, since digital photography has made such work almost obsolete.

The process followed by the two women shapes a conversation through both content and ritual and the photographs become a catalyst for a new understanding to emerge—between parent and child, artist and artist, past and present.

The video is a meditation on the vanishing space of the photographic darkroom and the demise of the utopia Lifschitz’s mother tried to create.