UZI TZUR , Leora Laor, Photographs, Dvir Gallery,Tel-Aviv, Ha'aretz,
Litreture & Culture, Sep. 16,2005, p2e.

Leora Laor creates an enigma and a tale, a contrast that arises from her photos and the way they are set up in the gallery.

Laor, a photographer who was active in Israel and the US in the 80's, has recently resumed her photography. These photos have been exhibited in one-man exhibitions in New York, Chicago and Paris, as have the "Wonderland" and" Images of Light" series, of which a single video frame, digitally processed, is exhibited in the Israel Museum in the "Oorim" exhibition. In Dvir gallery Laor shows her latest works.

The enigma relates mainly to time, the time in which the photos take place; a time which is not real but rather borrowed time, theatrical time or time of the theatre of life. The artificial digital processing of the light and images enhances the sense of fantasy. The fact that some of the photos are single frames taken from a video film gives them an element of inner movement. Also the "real" photos have a theatrical air, where time is borrowed, in the melancholic escape to the ball room dance halls (Images from Ettore Scola's film "Le Bal" come to mind).

Remarkable is the way Laor treats the photos of the theatre stage, as if they were pictures of real life. She erases the line between the two, and the actors and the set become unknown heroes. It is this duality that creates the enigma, and the technical aspect, the synthetic realism, completes the beauty of the picture.

The way the pictures are set up in the gallery reedits, like cinematic editing, the series Theatre, Dance Hall and Still Life in an emotional and sensual fashion. The editing also emphasizes the notion of a riddle, and the spectators move through pieces and bits of stories, trying to reassemble them. In the picture "No Title (A Tribute to Happiness)", the theatre scene resembles Gerhard Richter's works of photographic painting, in that the blurred contours express an outer and inner movement, a blur that vibrates form the black and whiteness of the suit of the man, who holds the hand of a woman wearing an old-fashioned floral dress. They are distant from one another, their faces are nearly erased, and the spotlight seems like a sunset. Theatre and real life fuse together into a poem of late love. Laor processes the tone and light of a photograph taken without the flash, of a dance hall that appears to be nearly static, until the desired texture is achieved. The bodies are illuminated in a Flemish-like light, and the black hair of the dancing woman dissolves into the surrounding darkness. The photo suggests the presence of other couples; a hint of a wall and a mirror enable the reconstruction of the entire hall.

A black and white photo describes a large and shiny clay cup sitting on a table cloth littered with crumbs. It is a rustic and coarse still live, as if taken from an illustration to an old Spanish book. Next to it is a color photo of a fair middle-aged man, who looks like he belongs to another decade, sitting in a foreign bar. The light is melting away his figure. He stares at us in a suspicious, slightly feminine look. In front of him are numerous beer glasses and behind him, framing him, hangs a large obscure painting on a theatrical scarlet piece of velvet, which stirs up thoughts of having the last drink.The combination of the clay cup and the bar scene creates something almost mystical.

Like a solitary stream of bright light is " Alma ", a photo that alludes to the serene portraits of girls by Reinke Dijkstra. With her penetrates daylight into the nocturnal and theatrical scenes, like a stream of the present, of exposed life among the fractures of veiled reality. It is a real photograph, not digitally processed like the others, an exception that does not reflect on the rest. Youthful and sensual Lolita, beautiful in her red top, stands alert yet somewhat shy; her gaze turned away.

Further along is a close-up of a light bulb hanging from the ceiling and casting its light on it. This photo exposes the light and darkness, the source of light that gnaws at the darkness, in a brilliant composition.

Another photograph of the dance hall. The figures move in a solemn and romantic elegance; the light that is projected from the bodies is soon swallowed up by the black clothes, and in the corners the shadows are dancing.

Laor photographs also still life that is stained and that yearns to other times. The picture seems to be taken from a distant past where the colors were enriched and artificial: a picture of glossy fruits and berries, and beside them a wooden or porcelain fish, which emphasizes them being preserved in poetic artificiality.

In another photo, a man's face emerges from the dark, and the warm light seemingly melts away the flesh of his face and beautiful lips, and the whiteness of his shirt turns into real florescent light. His profile, with the sideburn on his cheek and the felt hat on his head, reminds one of a Bavarian character taken from an early film by Rainer Werner Fassbinder.
The four pictures together, the light bulb, the dance hall, the still life and the man's face, compose a small play in four acts.

A woman who appears in the above mentioned picture is in another one holding a woman with short hair, and the blackness of their clothes merges them together into one entity. The light is Vermeer-like yet grained, thus creating mysterious yet extremely worldly and feminine characters. It is a brilliant composition of intimacy that exists in dance, which shivers around the edges.

The most enigmatic picture is "A Tribute to Adultery", a large black and white, theatrical and at the same time documentary photograph. It describes a dim stage, and on it is sitting a man in cotton pants and bare torso, in a position like a boxer. His face is distorted by the stage light that comes down like a beam and falls on the empty bed of fornication. Above, on a small screen, is the year 1968, apparently a time different from the real one. The table, bottle and glass on the right are blurred into a mirage. Although this is a picture of the theatre, there is a deceiving essence of reality in it.
"A Tribute to a 110 Heart Beats", a large and long black and white photograph, is rested against the wall and thus completes the standing position of the woman that is described in it. She is in the dark and wears a white turban that looks like a halo around her head. Her aging face is heavily made up, and in her light colored clothes she seems to be awaiting things yet to come, perhaps Fassbinder's character.
The combination of the boxer and the dancing women creates again a story with no plotline.

The exhibition ends in "Portrait of a Woman", which describes a bigger than life-size figure, who contains in her both real life and the theatre. Her face expresses strength and despair. It is the profile of a young woman whose seriousness is like that of an old woman, whose utter sadness is projected through every molecule of her body. Her hair is thick and black and the collar of her black coat is wrapped around her head like a wing. She looks like a Madonna for those doomed to a life in exiled, amazingly stoic and tragic.

In the context of quality of material and light, longing for another time, and brief encounters with other worlds, one must mention the highly recommended film "2046" by Wong Kar-wai, which processes realistic/fictional material into cinematic poetry.

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