Hilarie M. Sheets, Leora Laor, ARTnews, Feb 2007, pp. 137-138
In this impressive show of photographs, "wanderland #2", Israeli artist Leora Laor pushed her medium far into the the realm of subjectivity and emotion. Surfusing grainy scenes with a saturated palette reminiscent of cintage postcards, Laor isolates heighlightened moments of human longing or frailty.
Part of the drama here derived from the subjects' or in rehearsal. In Happiness ("Osher", Homage to Michael Gurevtich), 2005, a man and a woman face each other with clasped hands, yet the pregnant moment is one of ambighity, because the expressions on the subjects' faces are blurred. the postures imply a prelude to a tryst, a parting, or an act of violence. Another image, of two women ballroom dancing, was shot clandestinely during a dance class and portrays an unself-conscious instant of flirtation that might not heppen outside the confines of the room.
The lonliness conveyed by Laor's portraits of individals nods to Edward Hopper as well as Philip Lorca-diCorcia, who also manipulates lighting and color to highlight the psychologhical space his subjects. In Laor's photo of dancers socializing after a class, one man sits alone at a table littered with half-empty plastic cups, a conteporarycounter-point to Picasso's Absinth Drinker. Half of his face and his eyes are obscured in shadow, while his posture connotes dejection.In another portrait, a forlorn-looking woman caught in profile is brought into strak relief against an intense chartreuse axpanse reflecting the ghosts of black picture frames (Laor took it at a photography fair). Of course, the reflection of the viewer and the black frames in the gallery were also trapped in that same amber, momentarily conflating two worlds of looking and solitude.