PHOTOGRAPHS
Gersht, Ori
Israel / England (1967 - )
Concrete City Scans: Stardust
2003
Chromogenic color print mounted on aluminum
58 3/4 x 65 in. (149.2 x 165.1 cm) image and sheet size; 62 1/4 x 68 5/16 x 2 9/16 in. (158.2 x 173.5 x 6.4 cm) frame size
Gift of Burt and Jane Berman
FA 2009.40

The simplicity of a bank of windows becomes an ominous dreamscape in the hands of Ori Gersht. A commonplace daytime scene is rendered a lurid optical illusion by night. Neon shadows creep across the face of this anonymous building, brought into being by the unwavering stare of Gersht’s ultra-long exposure. Like pixels arranged in a grid—each equal in size, but varying in color and tone—these empty windows are separated by jarring white horizontal slashes which fool the eye; they might be slats, struts or scrapes across the retina. Without its edges in view, the building looms larger—windows multiplied manifold—and unfolds endlessly onto a street bathed in disorienting light.

-- Label copy for Videowatercolors: Carel Balth Among His Contemporaries, October 15, 2011, to January 22, 2012.

Large expansive color photograph of the Las Vegas casino seen at night, with reflections from the strip's lights visible in the windows and palm trees visible at the bottom. Glazed with Plexiglas and blond wood frame.
Ori Gersht’s photographs do not trace time in a linear sense. Gersht often focuses on the histories of a given location, his interest residing in the memories of the landscape. He uses his landscapes as witnesses of the human passage that connects the present with the past, inserting his images into a greater historical and spatial narrative. In his piece Stardust, from his 2003 Concrete City Scan series, Gersht points his lens from a rotating restaurant at the top of a Las Vegas high-rise. As he captures the grid of hotel windows in front of his camera, Gersht makes reference to the movement occurring behind his camera. The expansive and sublime image Gersht captures would not be possible without the architecture from where his camera turns.
Born in 1967 in Tel Aviv, Ori Gersht now lives and works in London, England. He received his MA in photography at the Royal College of Art in London and is now a professor of photography at the University for the Creative Arts, and a senior lecturer at the Kent Institute of Art and Design. His solo shows have traveled to galleries and museums in the U.S., Israel, and throughout Europe. Gersht’s work is in a number of permanent collections, including the Guggenheim Museum, New York; the Museum of Fine Arts Boston; and various other museums worldwide. He received an award in photography at the 2010 Beijing International Art Biennale and a best in show award for his History Repeating series at the Museum of Fine Arts Boston.