Limbus - Place for Photography, was founded in 1992 by a group of five artists who wanted to offer alternative mappings of the domains of art and photography and the relations between them. Their name, the Latin for limbo - the notion of the edge or boundary where souls assigned to neither heaven nor hell must wander - was well-suited to their artistic concept as well as to the exhibition space, an underground public shelter.
The founders dedicated the alternative gallery to a set of clear priorities: encouraging young photographers; featuring older photographers who had not received institutional recognition; supporting artistic collaborations in Israel and exchanges with artists from abroad; maintaining strong connections with galleries from Israel's peripheries; giving special attention to work made in the third world. In 1994, the gallery received the Gerard Levy Prize for Photography from the Israel Museum. In 1995 it was closed down.| Limbus – between Heaven and Hell |
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Book of photographs In 2008, members of the Limbus artists' group collected and edited a book of photographs which comprise a strong and appropriate finale to the gallery's work of over a decade before. The book features photographs by some eighty Israeli artists including Micha Kirshner, Pavel Wolberg, Barry Frydlender, Adi Ness, Miki Kartzman and Gilad Ofir, as well as lesser known figures. The closing gesture offers an examination of Israel's "new heroes." It thus corresponds fruitfully with the gallery's first show in 1992, You're a Big Shot, figurines of maleness, which proposed new readings of local views of heroism, aggression and force. The book Limbus – between Heaven and Hell, will be published in September 2008. |