David Reeb
Text zur Fotografie
FOTOARBEITEN
15.10 - 16.11





In Tel Aviv I took some photos on and near the beach, around a neglected entertainment complex- the „dolphinarium“- and a breakwater running out into the sea. It’s one of the few spots on the Tel Aviv seafront which haven’t yet been massively exploited for commercial purposes, probably because of a property dispute. I took snapshots of the hotels, people walking on the beach, people showering, parked cars, heavy traffic. A place where the messy town borders on the sea, which is altogether on a different scale and calmer and perhaps a bit like a forest.

Walking around a few days ago I got permission to take some pictures in a bank which is being renovated round the customers, with sacks of concrete and building waste stacked around and work proceeding near the customers standing in line. On Yom Kippur in Jaffa I photographed a family group sitting camped on the sidewalk, a couple of kids on bicycles, no traffic on a main street. Near my house in Tel Aviv a children’s playground, „The Messiah Is Coming“ on a banner draped over a synagogue in the background.


In Berlin a park out the windows of a gallery where I’m exhibiting, cars reflected in an empty showroom’s windows. A cafe interior, a couple talking at the tables outside. All these represent somehow marginal situations, a border between on and another conditions. To some extent they are about dislocation, about blurred distinctions and exchanges of context. I suppose that is mostly what these photos deal with. I come from painting and although I’ve used photography quite a lot as a tool of one kind or another and as a subject, only recently has it become a media which has many functions in common with painting for me. In a way these aren’t much more than snapshots, but I try to get them just right. Using a digital camera is a lot more fun for me now than a regular optical one, in part because it reinforces the arbitrariness which I aim for in many of the photos and they look like no more than references to their source images, rather than attempts to compete with them.