The Metaphysical City.
The city is the creation of man. For mankind was it built and
in his feverish mind it was invented. Streets, lanes, city squares,
shops, stone and wooden benches, trees planted along the avenue,
skyscrapers and ice cream stands - all these are a part of the
void in which every man's life story revolves, the platform on
which human tragedies take place.
Man builds his city and the city is the landscape of his life.
Here by that bus station he saw his father being beaten up by thugs.
At this very site, as a child, he once played ball. And from the
distant window on the seventh floor, there is where he was first
fired from his job, and from the pedestrian crossing across the
road he recalls once seeing a young man, dark-eyed, who momentarily
gave him a serious glance, gave a strange smile and moved away.
The city is static, yet every minute it is changing. Its houses
are fixed in their place and amongst them a ceaseless bustle takes
place - to work, to the night club, to the sex shop, to the cafe,
in the bus, on the train, in a car and on a bicycle - forward, on
and on, so the dance of life never stops. And in this constant procession,
amongst the crowds of rambling people each one is going his own
way, to his passions and disappointments, within the continuous
race to a mysterious place, or alternatively, to the one place we
all head for, each individual to a solitary world, and his world
is hidden from the eyes of the others.
A city is truth. A city is lie. In a strange self-loving way it
will always reflect itself in its puddles and every impaired stone
will count the millions of feet that have trodden upon it. At times
it will masquerade as a beautiful princess, at times as a nightmare.
Only those who take a close look will notice the pain waiting quietly
in the distant side of beauty, and at the same time the beauty erupting
from the pain.
Innumerable generations of architects have produced a chilly urban
beauty. The symmetry of the Renaissance, the heavy facades of the
neo-classic era, the radiant glass structures of our modern age,
their calculated splendor - the fruit of our intellect, stands in
sharp but harmonious contradiction with the storms that take place
in the heart of mankind. It has more than a measure of relief: this
is the effort to give meaning to what at times seems meaningless.
These perfectly structured spiral stairs in contrast to the countless
shirts and pants that hang to dry on the surface of an ugly concrete
building ; a square with ideal dimensions in Venice that the examining
eyes of the photographer transform into a green nightmare, next
to the streetwalkers crossing Charles Bridge, each one alone, each
in his own world. Neither the origin of the bridge, nor its outlet
is seen in the photograph.
And in another photograph - a reflection with an impressionistic
beauty of shops as reflected in a puddle, a reflection that creates
a momentary illusion of pure beauty, while the sign on the shop
reveals something else: an industry of sex with no emotional feelings.
And another, a city park lit by lamps, but its benches are altering
forms - are these benches or memorial stones?
In a photograph from New York - the measure of humanity in contrast
to a measure of grandeur. Huge buildings, in contrast to loneliness
and empty chairs, and in the middle - a vacuum without a living
soul. Even in places where people can usually be seen, as in an
underground station, the motion of the passing train rips the human
shadow and turns it into an unsolved mystery, undecided if it be
man or symbol.
Through the camera's lens, the physical turns metaphysical. Ordinary
scenes are revealed, and at the flash of the light the obvious is
exposed as a riddle. There is no need to produce meaningful pseudo-significant
scenes, replenished by hints and artificial cultural connections,
nor is there a need for super modern photographic or developing
techniques. The deep dimension of life in the city will easily be
revealed to those who pay attention.
Text by Tamir Grinberg
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