23 Moriah Avenue

In recent years, my parents passed away, with an interval of about four years between their deaths. My father was 91 when he died, and my mother, who passed away after him, was 95. The modest apartment I grew up in, at 23 Moriah Avenue in Haifa, has remained as it was since then.

We lived there, my parents, my two sisters, and I. I am the youngest. A standard urban apartment, typical of the period, on the second floor: three bedrooms, an entrance hall, and a balcony. During my childhood, it was a crowded, bustling apartment. During their old age, it looked quite large and spacious.

My father liked to say, lifting his finger: “To throw things away is far too easy!” My parents hardly ever threw anything away. If a new item was bought, the old one wasn’t thrown out. Frugality was a sacred quality. Always think before you act. Don’t discard outdated items. They may come in useful sometime in the future.

Only when I was alone, in the empty apartment, could I see all the items they had stockpiled. Chairs from various periods, decorative cushions, alarm clocks, bunches of keys, an office cabinet crammed with National Geographic magazines spanning three decades. All these had accumulated over the years, almost imperceptibly. Some of what I photographed was immediately visible, some I discovered when I opened cupboards and drawers.

I took the photographs in my parents’ home, in daylight. In most cases, a white tablecloth that I’d found in a cupboard served me as a uniform background. I used a digital reflex camera and a tripod. I was surprised by the quantity and diversity of the accumulated items. While photographing, I wondered how far I could go: how far could I intrude on my parents’ intimacy (my mother’s nightgowns, my father’s handkerchiefs). I also wondered how best to photograph.

I wanted the photos to be dissociated from a time and a context, to look like archival photographs – to be characterized by a neutral frontal gaze, like “typological” photography, to be sharp and informative. At the same time, in the tradition of family photos, I could not pass up the “snapshot” approach: a willingness to make room for coincidence, imprecision, a seeming lack of professionalism. I wasn’t trying for perfect photographs.

While taking the photos and preparing the exhibition I found myself asking myself many questions, which still remain open. Am I “documenting”? And if I am – what, exactly? Most of the objects I photographed seemed to me small and worthless: how do these objects and others like them turn an apartment into a “home”? To what extent do these objects that have remained here bear witness to those who lived among them? Have my choices been based on “facts” (what is there in the apartment) or on “interpretation” (my choices from amongst what is there)? My long and close contemplation of the contents of the home transformed the familiar apartment for me into a place filled with surprises.

Ronit Shany, January 2009 (From the Book).