Object of Melancholy

Photographs are objects of melancholy. They are reminders of death. They are an invitation to look for ghosts.

Photographs include the death of the photographed thing, whether it is human or object. Photographs are the remnants of history and are an expression of the vulnerability of life ever marching towards demise. […]

The photographs of France Lebée-Nadav pulsate with the pain of time. A monkey of bright lily-white, the skeleton of fish flying through the air, a jellyfish billowing up into a cloud. She etches pictures of nature, infused with eternal life and preserved in a museum-like display. […] In her photographs, the animate and inanimate are alike, objects of spirit, beings in the world. She transforms the two-dimensional into the three-dimensional, animating carefully folded paper. Lebée-Nadav immortalizes the momentary existence of fragments of light, the hypnotic presence of ghosts, and brushes over the cracks in walls connecting them.

An excerpts from the text by Ilanit Konopny

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