Alumah Meishar

Peels

By essence, the practice of photography and architecture passes through matter — matter that can be collected into layers and mark time; matter that can settle into a shape and express a particular texture and place. Throughout the work, the hand appears as a source of disruption, interruption and violation. The hand is responsible for constructing the frame, modifying the composition, pressing the trigger, crumpling the page and manipulating the material. There is a mediation between the eye that sees and the hand that executes: the eye looks at the hand and the hand is aware of being looked at, as part of an ongoing dialogue. The object’s surface — its thin skin, its coating — is what the gaze meets. The camera scans the surface, records, reveals, captures and marks down everything that comes its way. The special affinity of the surface with the third dimension provides a space for translations and physical interactions within those very surfaces, in the production of the image itself. This space allows us to roam on the thin plane of the two-dimensional photograph while suspending our perception of depth and perspective and interfering with the construction of the gaze and its dismantling.