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Time After Time &
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. |
Blow Up
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Time After Time
The small scale of the works in the series Time after Time
[2007] references a Dutch still life painting tradition
in which elaborate flower compositions were painted for domestic
settings. These paintings often displayed flowers that bloomed
at different times of the year, thus creating distorted images
of reality and emphasizing the true purpose of such a painting:
to display the wealth of its owners.
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