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Photographer - Ilit Azoulay
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It is an all too familiar view, routinely seen through the window of a car. An everyday sight: an electric tower, lamps, raindrops, and the
sky. Why should we even want to give this photograph another look? Shouldn’t this passing view be left to vanish, evaporate along with
all the views passing us by day after day, hour after hour?
This photograph is an impressive, wise work of art because it manages to isolate something significant in the banal, fleeting, everyday
scene. It shows the partial opening of a window, allowing us partial entry into a reality 'beyond' the temporary. The window opened by
the picture doesn’t transport us into a fantastic, completely different reality. The window is only slightly open and the world remains as
it is – while also turning into something else, broader and more significant.
Where is art 'located'? Is it in the world or in the photographer’s consciousness? Ilit Azulay’s photograph locates art 'in between' the two.
Where are the electricity pole and the two lamps located? Are they in the outside 'world' or inside the car? They appear in the exact
middle, drawn on the windowpane. Visualize them for a moment as though imprinted on the glass, not just seen through it. In this picture,
the glass is the symbolical representation of that strange delicate spot where photographic art takes place. That spot is not merely 'I',
nor is it only the 'world' or the 'object'. It is located between them.
What, specifically, does this artwork see? First and foremost, it sees the difficulty faced by the photographer. While both she and the
'world' being photographed are in motion, she must produce a static object out of the two streams of time. Remember that, unlike
painting, which bears traces attesting to the time of its creation, photography is timeless, forever frozen between two moments. The
car moving along the road is a symbolic expression of this impossible situation, since it is easy to notice the frozen point of view,
quite different from the 'moving' landscape we see from our car. This car, however, is a camera-car through which things look different.
The picture presents a dialogue. The electricity pole extends wires right and left. The lamp on the left almost touches, but fails to
receive the gift of the current. Note that a meeting of the wires at the right-hand lamp takes place only on the glass, in that two-
dimensional reality, never in the three- dimensional 'world'. Only on that plane is any communication possible. Outside the car and
without the camera no such communication is discernible simply because it does not exist in the world. There is, however, another
dialogue, giving the picture volume or 'depth': It is the dialogue between the clouds and the raindrops falling on the windowpane.
Electricity bestows light, the clouds turn into raindrops and the picture suddenly gains significance. What did we see here?
Probably no more than the way that fleeting scene froze and left something behind, despite having moved on. |
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