A DIALOGUE WITH LIGHT

My series, A Dialogue with Light, directly addresses the question of photography’s role in an era saturated with AI and simulated realities, doing so from the context of a physical and informational war in Israel. These are “straight photographs,” yet they resist being traditional documents. Created in-camera using long exposure, motion blur, and controlled focus, the series deliberately dissolves the landscape into a painterly abstraction.

Employing only the camera and available light, I utilize time and motion to break down the scene, rendering it as an impression, a memory, or a dream. The tangible world is deliberately liquefied. A nocturnal bomb shelter transforms into a monumental sculpture; the distant lights of an explosion could be misidentified as fireworks. This collapse of the boundary between the real and the surreal is central to the work.

This project is best understood as a form of post-photographic realism. It proceeds from the acceptance that the camera no longer holds a sole claim to truth. Instead, it leverages the aesthetic language of painting - a historically subjective medium - to document a contemporary paradox: the experience of a conflict that is simultaneously a harsh physical reality and a relentlessly mediated, simulated event. Ultimately, these images pose a critical question: when reality itself feels like a simulation, how can a photograph convey the truth?