Eclipse
Noga Greenberg ~ Maya Zehavi
Curator: Keren Saltz
An eclipse is an event of concealment, in which one celestial body casts a shadow that obscures another body's source of light. Inside the camera, however, a fundamentally opposite event takes place: an exposure that occurs only when the shutter opens. The space between absolute darkness and blinding light is where the photographic event unfolds. The works of Noga Greenberg and Maya Zehavi investigate the extremes of this space, deliberately disrupting photographic materials and stretching the limits of representation while reducing their visual language to color, form, and stain.Noga Greenberg photographs domestic spaces on analog film, then places the exposed rolls in a washing machine and dishwasher, bringing together the chemicals of photographic film with the cleaning agents used by the machines. This combination leaves its mark, producing unexpected visual phenomena within the image. In another series, Greenberg traces the burnt edges of photographic film—the final section of the roll, which is typically never exposed or regarded as meaningful or valuable.Maya Zehavi deliberately sabotages her photographs, transforming their visual information into dense, random bands of color. She folds the disrupted image, giving it a new form that departs from the conventional format of photography. In other works presented in the exhibition, Zehavi begins with the photographic image but approaches it as a material capable of functioning three-dimensionally in space, subjecting it to processes of cutting and joining with other materials.Zehavi and Greenberg extend the moment of image-making, transforming it into an ongoing event that does not end with the pressing of the shutter. They attempt to look beyond the spectrum of visible light, operating within the space of the eclipse through a surrender to chance and the loss of control—qualities that are inseparable from the photographic act.The works of Greenberg and Zehavi dwell within the process of image production. They reflectively examine the surface of photography while searching for spaces that have yet to be mapped, spaces marked by gaps and voids. The artists' engagement with unpredictable phenomena proposes a mode of working that departs from reliance on the decisive moment. Photography both reveals the world and is itself exposed to it through use. The burn is the physical manifestation of the contact between light rays and the photographic surface, while the eclipse is the founding event.