Artist statements

Work 1, 1999 In this work entitled “Work 1”, I examined relationships between people. 
I was especially interested in how loneliness and isolation could persist within a relationship. 
I created these photographs in locations I sought out around southern Tel Aviv, 
Seeking spaces that combined beauty and isolation. I capture these scenes, and next, to further visualize relationships, I begin to sketch the placement of models within these spaces prior to bringing the individuals to the location for production.  
The scenes I set up project into these already charged spaces.  Many of my compositions project my own state of mind at the time. Some depict scenes I observed elsewhere – for example, a scene I witnessed in
The New York City subway, then recreated for this project within the chosen setting.
The models in most of the scenes are, cast as either people I knew or had imagined, 
Superimposing elements of fact and fiction, document and artifice, authenticity and faking
Reality for the viewer.
Each completed photograph tells a complete story. 

Love Triangle, 2003 - 2006  Mass media culture gives us glamorous images of love that we believe we must reproduce in order to realize our dream of love. Love Triangle stages and subverts this cycle of reproduction, revealing both our need and our failure to reach perfection in an image. This series began when I came across a vintage postcard from the 1920s and became fascinated with it. I felt a distance from the time and ideals shown in this strange scene of children posing as an adult couple. Yet, as one who has photographed weddings, I also recognized a familiar yearning for highly artificial—and, to me, equally alienating—images to embody love. Crossing times and images, I wondered how my friends, some in relationships, some not, would react if I asked them to become what I saw on this and similar postcards. I chose each couple carefully, seeking a certain innocent, childlike appearance. Some couples I matched with postcard images based on visual resemblance.
I matched others because I knew their relationships would fit an image’s dynamic. 
From among many attempts, I chose the one photograph where each couple seemed to truly believe they had attained the perfect postcard moment and its idealized vision of love. However, despite their best efforts, they fail noticeably. 
A woman smiles blissfully yet grips a bouquet too tightly, causing white knuckles. Hands that should be holding each other are wooden, not quite touching. For me, the saddest picture is the one where everything is in place, perfection almost reached, flowers held together, yet the people are still not connected. These photographs document emptiness in the pursuit of the beautiful surface. By inviting each couple into my studio, giving them their clothes, their makeup, their pose, indeed their entire image, I was both defining their relationship and questioning it. As the photographer, 
I personified the culture that demands conformity with images in exchange for the fulfillment of desire. In this role, unseen yet present throughout the image and the moment, 
I was the unacknowledged third party that is the completing side of the love triangle.

Enameled, 2009 - 2013 Babies are our most profound symbol of pure beauty. Their innocence, curiosity, clear gaze and softness, makes us all unite and share the same human reaction of unconditionally love.I focused on 1-year-old baby girls as I found that in this age their gestures are incredibly raw and yet looks familiar. In the work Enameled I photograph baby girls with blond hair and blue eyes as a measure to beauty. I cast & manipulate them to further idealize their image as I am looking to question beauty and the human symbol of perfection and at same time to mirror today’s society and parental actions in it. I treat my subjects with love and care, using soft and dusty make up, focusing on the eyes (windows to their/our souls), while utilizing Neo Classical poses on my models, which are ever more political and religious then sexual.