Five bottles and an arrangement of weeds
The very first image I created in the darkroom was a photogram (image created by placing objects directly on photographic paper - no camera involved). This was the winter semester at SMC (Santa Monica College) in 2016, and we spent the mornings, 3-4 days a week in the darkroom. I remember thinking I could play with photograms forever, but of course after one week we moved on and there was never time to go back and play. The second semester, in the advanced darkroom class I saw my first Lith print and it was love at first sight. The silent waiting for the image to emerge, watching the developer tray for 5, 10 minutes, sometimes more, not really knowing what will appear. The closest thing to magic I ever experienced.
When we returned to Israel, we improvised a home darkroom (my pedantic French professor from Photo 1 would kill me if he saw it ...). Part in the studio, part in the bathroom, moving between the rooms with prints in a light proof bag....unconventional - but it works. There was nothing preventing me from playing with photograms now ....but I didn't. Waiting for "interesting" ideas meant I was doing nothing. A few months ago I placed a few weeds collected on the morning walk in a set of 5 small glass bottle, and I remember thinking this may be nice to photograph. Yesterday, after finishing the initial Lith print tests of two new images, I grabbed the bottles and placed them under the enlarger. Why not try? And here it is, at long last, a Lith photogram. Unforced, unrestrained, unpredictable, unique. Reality as real as it gets, yet unrecognizable despite the fact we look at it daily. "The only journey is the one within" said Rilke long time ago, could this be the start of a new one for me?