Aviv Zucker

The Scenery Doesn't Know Where It's Photographed From

1964, the French relatives came to Israel for a visit. My grandfather’s brother Poldi takes them out to the gate of the house on 18 Ein Tzurim Street for a family photo on the backdrop of Ramat Rachel. The sun goes down and he turns the camera to the sunset first and only then to the family. A red Israeli sun looks back from the screen, frame by frame, hypnotizing, time stands still. A sun like this does not evade the lens of the camera in the family album. It accompanies the figures and the light continues to dazzle years on.
Sinai, Sharm el-Sheikh, it seems so carefree because it has the most beautiful sunsets. Mom, my age now, tries to look through the rays of sun at the camera, at the slide film, at me, as I look at the reddish scan of her face. My mother’s gaze is always with me – as a child and again as an adult, looking at her as a child. The materials I collected have aged, yellowed, deteriorated, and I try to repair, restore, freeze for one more moment the memory in which I was not present and turn it into a new memory of my own.
For me, the sun is a drawing means. Through it I uncover the reflection hidden in the photo paper. The printing process is long, repetitive and requires patience. Then the colors of the sunset appear on the paper in the middle of a clear day.