YANIV WAISSA / POETIC AND FAMILIAR

© Yaniv Waissa

Yaniv Waissa and his photography are what I would call poetic. With titles such as Butterflies I Haven't Seen There, Here They're Flying...Flew...Already Gone, and In Silence, his website seems to support my assumption about him.

In his text for Disintegration Of A Revived Nation, Waissa writes, " I create an intimate atmosphere in every frame and put my personal feelings, emotions and nostalgia into it."

And it's true. The images do feel personal and seem much older than they are. Even without having been to the places Waissa photographs, they feel as though they could be in a grandparents photo album. Waissa seems to have discovered the formula for nostalgia.

In writing about Waissa's work on eyecurious, Marc Feustel wrote, "His statement on the series contains no overt political messages and mentions nothing about the Arab-Israeli conflict, but I find that this work, which deals with rebuilding and replacing the old with the new in Israel, gains a layer of meaning by virtue of the political context in which it is being made."

I have the same impression about the work. Perhaps it just goes to show how difficult it is to make work in parts of the greater Middle East, which aren't viewed through politicized eyes, regardless of the intent.

© Yaniv Waissa