History Repeating

The first comprehensive survey of this up-and-coming Israeli-born photographer and video artist, this richly illustrated book presents the best of Gersht’s achingly beautiful photographs and videos and explores how he intertwines sheer spectacles of painterly and narrative imagery with personal and collective memory, metaphysical journeys, contextualized spaces, and the history of art and photography. Ori Gersht’s practice bridges places and histories full of traumas, whether it is a hill overlooking an Arab settlement at a contested border in Israel, war-torn buildings in Sarajevo, the white noise of his train journey to Auschwitz, or the clearing of trees in a forest that once stood witness to mass murder in the Ukraine. Engaging in that difficult arena of not only pushing the photographic camera to the limits of what it can record, but also working in innovative ways with film and video, Gersht’s aesthetic reflects both a highly researched and an instinctive approach to his choice of media.

About the artist: Ori Gersht was born in Tel Aviv and lives in London. He holds a Masters in Photography from the Royal College of London. His work has been exhibited internationally at venues such as the Victoria and Albert Museum; the Tate Britain; the Santa Barbara Museum of Art; the Imperial War Museum; and at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, August 28, 2012, through January 6, 2013. Additionally, Gersht’s work is in several esteemed collections, including The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, the Israel Museum, the Jewish Museum, and the Tate. He is the first artist to show a work of video art simultaneously on multiple screens of New York City’s Times Square as part of the program “Times Square Moment: A Digital Gallery”; it is on view every day at 11:57 pm EST and at other spontaneous moments throughout the day and evening through April 2012.