Sharon Yaari is a noted and influential artist for whom photography is a means of expression and a vehicle for stimulating dialogue. The environments he tours and contemplates undergo a thorough treatment under his gaze; he is literally and symbolically a path-breaker who manipulates and interferes with the photographed scene. Yaari is known for his large-format, color prints with sharply-focused landscapes. When not visibly inhabited by human beings, Yaari's scenes are often palpably imbued with their absence or with the poignant traces of their doings. Some of these photographs examine artificial settings and the search for ideal appearances; others, in contrast, reveal touching patches of neglect. Yaari's work has earned him many followers, but he never stays in place long. Each of his photographic series gives birth to a new idea, a different point of view and a fresh state of mind.
Hope for Long-Distance Photography
Book of Photographs
Tel-Aviv Museum of Art
April 2006
The photographs in this book (and exhibition of the same name) are small black-and-white images of houses and backyards. All of them were photographed long-distance from the windows of Yaari's Tel-Aviv apartment. They show seemingly banal scenes, almost accidental camera shots, but their ordinary surface hums with an undercurrent of significance. Like other of Yaari's works, these photos enter into an intimate situation that reveals the untidy coupling of human beings with nature. Delay and failure call out to us from these mundane corners, and turn into poetic visual phrases under our magnetized gaze.
