OFER SHAFRIR

Faceless Landscapes

It’s a fact. We learn by reading Ofer Shafrir’s curriculum vitae that the photographer lives in Israel in a kibbutz. But apart from this document nothing enables us to situate the places we discover in the photos on the walls; nothing indicates their origin with precision. In this definitively grey universe all activity has been suspended, all liveliness banned. The subjects (a shelter or a block of council flats, a rock or a haystack), set in a neutral background and frozen by the artist’s camera, seem petrified for good. By their size and their pronounced frontal approach that tolerate no exception, the facades and the blind walls strike the eye of the spectator. The solidified space where air has stopped circulating is narrowed, tightened, deprived of all transparency. Sacrificed to the demands of surface, these fragmented landscapes give off an extreme sense of balance, a tension that never subsides.

There is every indication that the photographer feels the need to confront his object alone, to eliminate all competition, to exclude all human presence. But more than a dialogue it’s a hard struggle, sober and austere. Despite the proximity of the camera’s eye, the work remains distant and impersonal. Solid and unchangeable, these figurative constructions are devoid of all sentimental value, letting no emotional aspect whatsoever come to light. In other words the images of Ofer Shafrir take the risk of forgoing seduction. Hence their great strength.

Itzhak Goldberg
Art Historian

Translated from French by Lou Møllgaard, Jean Clévenot and Maria Lund