In this six minute film, celebrated photographer Ori Gersht, who is a mentor for the second Jerwood/Photoworks Awards, discusses the themes behind his practice, the rewards of being a Jerwood/Photoworks Awards mentor and offers some key advice for emerging photographers.
A group exhibition of work from winners of the second Jerwood/Photoworks Awards shows at Jerwood Space, London 17 January 11 March 2018 followed by a UK tour including showings at Impressions Gallery and Belfast Exposed.
Ori Gersht was born in Israel in 1967, but has lived in London for over 20 years. Throughout his career his work has been concerned with the relationships between history, memory and landscape. He is a professor at the University of the Creative Arts, Rochester.
He often adopts a poetic, metaphorical approach to explore the difficulties of visually representing conflict and violent events or histories. Gersht approaches this challenge not simply through his choice of imagery, but by pushing the technical limitations of photography, questioning its claim to truth.
Frequently referencing art history, Gersht’s imagery is uncannily beautiful; the viewer is visually seduced before being confronted with darker and more complex themes, presenting a compulsive tension between beauty and violence. This has included an exploration of his own family’s experiences during the Holocaust, a series of post-conflict landscapes in Bosnia and a celebrated trilogy of slow-motion films in which traditional still lives explode on screen.
Read about Ori Gersht’s solo exhibition This Storm is What We Call Progress supported by Photoworks in 2012.
The accompanying limited edition publication Artist Book can be purchased here.
For more on the Jerwood/Photoworks Awards, click here.
