A Form of View by Yoav Friedlander

Issue 96

My work presents a chaotic perception of an “Americanized Israeli”; composed of American culture, desert landscapes and war. It is based on the recognition that reality is mediated through images as we experience many aspects of our world through photographs and not in person. In this body of work I mix images of Scale models I build with landscapes I photograph. The models are recreations of memories, collective and personal, places I saw only through photographs and other places I could only see in photographs due to restricted access. Like photographs this scale models share an indexical relation to the origin. I make them, and photograph them with the intent that they will echo the realism of the original and bare the illusion of the photograph. While Photographs refer to reality my models refer to the images that represent that reality. Both enable external observation of a reality through its copy.  

At times we find ourselves confused when the real seems to be different from how it should be according to its own image. It seems as if ever since the invention of the photograph, reality has become augmented by its own image.

Yoav Friedlander lives and works in Queens, New York.  
To view more of Yoav's work, please visit his website.