“Facing Reality” is a series of photographs that depict the tension and tribulations of the divorce a sibling of mine underwent which occurred alongside our parents divorce while my other sibling continued building her family of four. This period of time lasted from 2014 through 2019. While making these images, I found it too difficult to edit through them, so I decided to wait until a point that I’d processed the events which happened in 2020. These images are a direct continuation of my previous series “Performing Reality” (2012-2014).
While “Performing Reality” brought to light the performative roles that my family and I fell into, and by proxy, certain consequences we each faced because of those expectations, “Facing Reality” tells the story of how each of us blossomed into our truths. Being Jewish, there is a level of expectation that is set onto us from a familial perspective which tackles tradition, heritage, and preservation. After thousands of years of persecution and near extinction, the affect of continuing on a Jewish path that has historically been expected of a religious family is particularly heightened. Straying away from that path is not often looked at as desirable in our culture, to put it lightly.
The juxtapositions of the family photographs coupled with landscapes, and found images help articulate the emotional depth and shifts in our familial dynamic during this period. I believe that our story sheds light on the power of resilience and that choosing a path that is harder, is more often than not, the path that will lead to exceptional happiness; something our ancestors would attest to if they could.
I was raised in a close-knit, conservative Jewish home, with two loving parents and two older sisters. In this environment, traditional gender roles play a very important part in forming the family dynamic. As social expectation dictates, my father is the provider and my mother is the nurturer. Growing up I became increasingly aware of my homosexuality and I realized I didn’t fit into this mold. My parents were accepting and tolerant of my sexuality, but I was curious to confront the suspected underlying tension. These images are not evidence of the distance from my parents, but rather, they are made in spite of it. In many of the images, a recurring mood expressed by the subjects is lethargy; throughout the body of work, there is a sense of simultaneous comfort and melancholia.
There is an image of me lying in bed under my mothers gaze. The love and connection between us is subsumed by a latent tension. Moments like these can be read differently depending on the viewer's impression of my sexuality. My sisters are caught in moments of sudden contemplative sadness. Their stoic presence is an extension of my parents affection and caring nature. My father, the patriarch, is classically portrayed as such. In a way he is present in all the pictures; he is the facilitator, the man of the house. In contrast my mother is the nurturer and the caretaker.
Most of the imagery we are used to seeing of queerness is related to the struggle within our community. The images in this series show an empowered group of Jewish queers, just as we had completed our hike up Masada in Israel, with the intention of simply staring deeply into the glorious sunrise. The strenuous hike, which reddened our faces and rendered our bodies physically vulnerable and raw, mirrored what each of us had overcome in our lives to get to this point in time, where we could come together and take pride in each other’s commonalities. At best, I wish for these images to be a statement, in spite of our continued struggle for our equality and acknowledgement globally, of our present- where people of a queer identity have the agency to create more spaces than any time prior in history to feel empowered, safe, and beautiful.
The photographs I’ve collected and printed are fractions of an image depicting an explosion in Gaza during the summer of 2014. I am using an antiquated photographic process in order to emphasize the idea of destruction. In using alternative processes there are many variables that can cause a disruption of sorts in the way an image is printed which I’ve chosen to embrace such as light leaks, an incorrect mix of chemicals, or leaving a print in a bath for an incorrect amount of time. Specifically, I printed the images using the Kallitype process because the tonal range and contrast level best articulated the dramatic aesthetic I thought suited the images. I believe these missteps add to the destructive nature of the subject matter.
These images are about chaos and the way people handle the frantic nature of war and its imagery. The fragmented assembly of this image is a metaphor for my frustration with the inability most people have in fully grasping the situation in the Middle East because society is so far removed from it. We have become desensitized by the images of explosions because of the media's constant output of it. The title of this piece is “2200”. This amount represents the number of casualties resulting from "Operation Protective edge" on both sides of the conflict. My intent is not to project my own personal political beliefs on the matter but rather my hope is that by bringing these images to people's attention, we can begin to pay proper attention to the conflict and become more informed about them.
