ABOUT

My current work in photography is deeply influenced by the field in which I worked for many years. As a physicist and materials engineer in my past, I was engaged in growing and researching crystals, in optics and lasers. Today, these elements reemerge in my work and are visually re-invented. They reflect the formation of geometric shapes and symmetries from nothing, reminiscent of crystalline structures. Often my ideas for images are created intuitively, at other times they are born following an image I've seen. It is a circular dialogue between idea and material or between material and idea: the interplay between them alludes to new and mysterious worlds, imagined, seemingly futuristic or ancient images in character.

Some of the series that appear in the portfolio were created in the studio with craft based materials or those borrowed from the world of architectural models, with which I produce two-dimensional and three-dimensional tabletop models. These models that I build give birth to scenes that allow me to bridge between the objects before me and the fruits of my imagination. Often I begin working in a dark room and use different lighting - such as backlighting, side lighting, on a light table of my own invention, or various laser lights, which allow me to breathe life into the models or objects I place. The light then transforms its agency, turning from a means to the object itself or to the raw material in the image, through which the various geometric shapes become dynamic as they interchange and form imaginary relationships between them.

An earlier body of work in the portfolio was created in street photography or still life. In these series, I was looking to breathe life into everyday objects, whether in outdoor or indoor photography. I aim to abstract from the subject before me, by focusing on a single plane within it, an object I separate from its background. Thus, a new context is formed for the object, allowing for a new interpretation of it, a unique appearance, and for it to embody a "personality" of its own. Sometimes this emphasizes only the object, but at other times, it changes its very essence. It is as if the object had previously been just one of many extras on a set, while now it has received a "role" of its own.

                                                                       Dan Gazit