Vanishing Zones
Roi Kuper
2013
...Vanishing Zones, a body of photographic works from 1990-1994 is a lyric body of works, introvert and distanced that does not easily lend itself to interpretation. The images included in this body of works evade definition or a fixation of a singular meaning. In all of them there is found outstanding paradoxical power of radical existence and inexistence. A force that stems from constant movement, smooth, flowing, between black and white, between contrast and haziness, between defining and identifying outlines and blurring, obscurity, and effacement.
Illusion, tension, ambiguity, intimacy, strangeness and alienation all trickle in the scenes, in a single composition of transparency and turbulence, creating a situation of a strange journey lacking tension between floatation and wallowing, between elevation and submersion.
The works could be said to be triggering a pattern of addiction. An addition to the never ending search for a coherent, cohesive, recognizable image, but at the same time also to the ongoing attempt to escape it, and the immediate meaning it embodies, to slip away to different worlds, undefined, nonverbal, that grasp one with their sensual powers. Grasping and not letting go...
- Design: Hila Lavi
- Editing: Roi Kuper
- Texts: Hadas Maor, Liat Lavi, Romi Mikulinsky
- Language editing: Liat Lavi
- Copies: 500
- Pages: 164
- Type of binding: hardcover
- Dimensions (cm): 20x24
- Type of printing: Offset
- Publication: Self-Published
- Place of publication: Tel Aviv
- Supported by: The Shpilman Institute for Photography
- Book photography: Yair Meyuhas
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Roi Kuper (b. 1956) is an Israeli photographer whose work since the mid-1980s explores time, place, memory, and death through a philosophical and poetic lens. His solo exhibitions include Ashdod and Gaza Dream at the Israel Museum, Necropolis at Tate Modern, Citrus at the Herzliya Museum of Art, and The Hinder Sea at the Ashdod Art Museum. Recipient of awards such as the Ministry of Culture Prize for Arts and the Leon Constantiner Prize, his works are held in major collections including the Tate Modern, Israel Museum, and Tel Aviv Museum of Art. Kuper, an Associate Professor at Shenkar College, is known for series like Vanishing Zones and Necropolis, which combine lyrical imagery with meticulous black-and-white photography.
