Connections
 

The work "Connections," was created on a long-term process of simultaneously photographing my son Yonatan and landscapes. Through four years (2004-2008) I have photographed Yonatan consistently in an attempt to discover the mysterious bond between father and son. As I got deeper into the process, I neglected external documentation; The ambiguity and obscurity intensified.

I chose the point of view that allows to parallel the relationship with Yonatan and the complexity and entanglement of the landscape. Not the landscape that is visible, but the one in which it tries to conceal itself. It is as if the landscape is revealing the indecipherable. There is an affinity between two types of photographs: the child and the landscape.

I was led by the non-verbal, sensory experience. It was not my intention to capture the surface, but rather what lies underneath, the beating heart that exists in a photographic space as an independent reality. I intended to shed the routine and fascinating camouflage that exists in the (distant) landscape perception, which creates a kind of aesthetic aura, and to find what is hidden in the landscape as a sensory experience, and perhaps even a transcendental one, which is related to the essence of things, the essence of the landscape, the essence of the child. Is it possible to feel the flesh, the bones of the skeleton, and the capillaries of existence? Is it possible to hear and see the gut and the pulsating voices of the portrait? Can feelings created by the observation be expressed through language? Is human identity conceivable? Does the figure or the landscape depend on the existence of the observer?

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By Yoram Vidal