Shai Ignatz:
Jo

Over the years, Shai Ignatz has expanded portrait photography as a category, state,  and practice. His exhibitions, books, and photographic installations from recent years (seemingly) expose the ‘session’ – the photographic encounter  –  in all its particulars and meanings. For the first time in the artist’s career, this exhibition contained video works only: short films, each featuring a different protagonist moving and acting during a photo session. 

 

The living room, the bed, and the hotel room were the main arenas for the encounters. The subjects were there for the session, framed only by its terms. The power dynamics between photographer and subject was ever-present, variable and pliant, often even unpredictable.

 

At the heart of this move to expand the photographic portrait in Ignatz’s work was the rejection of the typological principle. There was no accumulation of a ‘mosaic,’ no sociological conclusion, and no unifying, grounding rule. On the contrary: the works stemmed from a total commitment to the unique, the distinct, and the specific. The wringing intimacy that characterized them would not have been created without the encounter in its present form, without the freedom and the importance the artist had conferred on the unique performativity of each one of the subjects.