Photopoetics

Personal Photography, Private Poetry

Simha Shirman, Noa Sadka, Tova Lotan

The exhibition private photography, personal poetry presents works by three artists, all of whose art combine photography and personal poetry.

Simha Shirman wanted to become a poet. First and foremost, he is a photographer. Writing poetry is part of his work as a photographer. Photography and poetry are materially and intuitively related in the works of Tova Lotan, a painter. Noa Sadka is a multidisciplinary artist whose work produces a mutual platform for poetry and photography.

These three artists approach the photographic medium in different ways, however, each one of them uses a poetic/ biographical and private written language pushing the boundaries of photography, responding to it, and adding another voice to their work.

Tova Lotan casts images and poetry words into her works. Personal biography and memory remnants are the forces behind her work. Photography is a mean, and it functions both as a platform and as an active ingredient. When photography is absent from her work, it is replaced by text and material or nonmaterial: five holes in a Perspex board signify five trees, entirely white and the sentence "your picture is forming"  which aside from its poetic immediate meaning, is also referring to the chemical process of chemical printing in a photo lab.

The photos as well as the poetry in Lotan's works are vague, and speak of absence/ almost-ness/ disappearance or formation.

Ayelet HaShachar Cohen, September 2011