American Optical

American Optical is an artist's book by Tel Aviv based photographer and video maker Leigh Orpaz. The project is composed of photographs made by Orpaz’s father (who died when she was young) and grandfather (who died a few years ago), as well as old slides she purchased on eBay and her own work. Both Orpaz’s father – who was a professional photographer – and grandfather – who was an amateur photographer – left behind boxes upon boxes of countless slides and negatives. Presenting these photographs within a new order and appropriating them in a mixed display along with Orpaz’s own photographs creates a “family album of sorts.” A personal counter-archive were the private and the public, the past and the present, the analog and the digital are intertwined in order to explore nostalgic modes of interpretation and suggest a new way of reading them.