Held Light

2023 – Present

We arrived in Tel Aviv in the early hours of October 7, 2023, and awoke to sirens directing us to shelter as the war began. In those first days, we did not know whether we were safe; day and night were marked by the sounds of interceptions overhead, rendering the experience surreal and disorienting. We were able to leave a day early, carrying with us the weight of uncertainty and sorrow for lives irrevocably altered. In the days that followed, works made in Venice and Florence emerged from a heightened and inward way of seeing. In Venice, atmosphere eclipsed image—calmed by lapping water, interrupted by percussive boats—while light became something to notice, hold, and trust. In Florence, physical limitation confined the work to Villa Cora, once home to Empress Eugénie, and the adjacent Giardino del Bobolino, where a grounding presence and narrowed geography allowed the work to settle into pause. Inspired in part by Pictorialist photogravures and halftones by Steichen, Stieglitz, and Coburn, and rendered in restrained tonal registers, the images are printed on Japanese kozo papers, finished with hand-applied precious metals, and presented in antique frames chosen for their patina and shape, echoing the image just enough to allow it to breathe. These works are not documents of place, but impressions shaped by disorientation, where light, surface, and time offer quiet shelter.