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