“My work is conjunction between Israel and America. It focuses on similarities and differences between two different cultures and sets of geographical locations seen through a perspective of an ‘Americanized Israeli’. The body of work combines photographs of landscapes, still lifes and scaled models of Israel and America. I grew up in the valleys of the Judean Desert between Jerusalem and the Dead Sea. My perception is chaotic; composed of mediated American culture, desert landscapes, and war, which became integral in my life. Various aspects of our reality, are being described by photographs and have never being experienced by us in person. Photography has visually mapped reality, and since we were looking up to the medium as a neutral reflection of what visibly exists. Photographs have set the expectations for things we’ll might experience; at times we find ourselves considering what is real to be different from how it should be according to its own image. I base my work on the recognition that our world is informed by images. Photographs represent and replace experiences, memories, landscapes and objects. Since the invention of the photograph, reality has become augmented by its own image.”--Yoav Friedländer

Yoav Friedländer, born in 1985. A second generation to be born in Israel.

-

攝影師Yoav Friedländer1985年出生、成長於以色列的小鎮Maale Adummim。高中畢業後曾強制入伍服務長達三年，在作戰訓練期間悄悄以相機和手機捕捉照片，對原本在軍隊外不會經歷到的特殊情況及風景充滿興趣。隨著從軍服務的結束，攝影超越了業餘愛好、成為他的生活重心，他在耶路撒冷的哈薩達學術學院（HCA，Hadassah Academic College Jerusalem）修習傳播攝影科系，而後搬到紐約攻讀視覺藝術學院(SVA，School Of Visual Arts)藝術創作碩士，繼續探索攝影藝術，以另一種不同過往的距離和視點審視自身過去。

Yoav自承是一名「美國化」的以色列人，他的一連串生活背景也反映在他所致力的主題——揉合了以色列與美國的相似性以及文化、地理位置的差異，這些影像包含了風景照片、靜物以及兩國的物件元素。美國文化、沙漠景觀與戰爭是Yoav生活記憶中無法分離的部分，他從不掩蓋因此產生的混亂感受，將知覺交由相機——這個認識世界的媒介，是如此貼近現實、卻又重組了現實的質地。在Yoav的作品中，攝影透過視覺映射現實，而現實將透過它本身的留影而烙下更深的印痕。