ZIPI ACHISHACHAR
The multidisciplinary artist Zipi Achishachar succeeds to preserve moments, sights, and objects and to integrate them in a way that creates new connotations. She saves them from the teeth of time thus perpetuates them.
Time is the main factor in her photographs and its impact is evident in man -made objects, and in the natural landscape. In her close-up photography she gives new presence and animation to staged arrangements and to sections of existing reality. In some of her works she confronts the outer reality and shows them through an unconventional point of view. As, for example, a scene near the beach, depicted through a round hatch.
There is a combination of urban and natural and of different textures, incorporated into a composition of opposite lines and directions.
Other group of works contains a staged arrangement of several items, which tells a story and inspires the viewer's imagination, his pool of memories, and invites him to a shared experience. The images of the inanimate objects become dynamic and form a starting point of a personal and common journey.
he curiosity of discovering and deciphering the new essences gives the process of observation a quality of vitality and continuity.
Like a film or play director, she attempts to create with a few images, and contrasts between dark and light, a dramatic encounter aimed toward the future.
Through the hidden symbolic meaning that emerges from the photographed objects Zipi Achishachar creates a dialogue with the observer, evoking his personal and collective memories.
A typical example is the photograph of the partially burned shoes, placed on a severed tree trunk, which serve as a mute testimony to a violent nihilistic event.
Symbolically, each one seems to represent a different segment of population: feminine and elegant and simple and seemingly from lower social status, both annihilated by the Nazis during the Holocaust, regardless of their status.
The truncated tree on which they are standing signifies finality but the strands of grass starting to grow on it and the shades of green that can be observed in the darkness on the right, indicate hope, new beginning, and continuity.
The number written on the burned shoes can be associated with the numbers burnt on the arms of the detainees and the victims in the concentration camps.
A charming atmosphere stems from the powerful and vivid compositions.
The contrasts between light and dark, and the clearer quality in some areas and blurred in others, also adds to the dramatic scenes.
Creating new visual content by focusing on the small details of the existing or staged reality emphasizes hidden textural qualities and creates new abstract charming qualities full of vigor and vitality.
Another example of the effect of the "teeth of time" can be depicted in a close up of rusty iron beams, in which she manages to convey the beauty of the rust with sensibility and delicacy.
There are implied physical journeys such as in a photograph of a hat placed on a book, next to a folded garment.
Or in a photograph depicting a folded military blanket placed on a travel crate. The edge of the blanket slightly penetrates the front space and draws our attention to the natural beauty of the texture of the wood.
The spiritual journeys are reflected in close-up of a shelf on which books are arranged according to the colors of their covers. The details are blurred at the edges and clear in the center. Another example appears in the photograph of old, delineated pages with music notes placed on a wooden crate. The scene contains sharp and gradual contrasts between shaded and illuminated areas, evoking a dynamic sense of occurrence and movement. The notes seem to represent the common phrase: "and the music remains forever," They are about to take off any moment, and to bring the treasures inherent in the tune to a new destination.
Dr. Dalia Hakker-Orion, June 2020