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Blow Up [2007]
The large-scale photographs entitled Blow Up depict elaborate
floral arrangements, based upon a 19th Century still-life painting
by Henri Fantin-Latour, captured in the moment of exploding.
Gersht´s compositions are literally frozen in motion,
a process dependent on the ability of the advanced technology
of photography to freeze-frame action. This visual occurrence,
that is too fast for the human eye to process and can only be
perceived with the aid of photography, is what Walter Benjamin
called the ‘optical unconsciousness’ in his seminal
essay ‘A Short History of Photography’.
Flowers, which often symbolise peace, become victims of brutal
terror, revealing an uneasy beauty in destruction. This tension
that exists between violence and beauty, destruction and creation
is enhanced by the fruitful collision of the age-old need to
capture “reality” and the potential of photography
to question what that actually means. The authority of photography
in relation to objective truth has been shattered, but new possibilities
to experience reality in a more complex and challenging manner
have arisen. |
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