MICHEL KIRCH
BEYOND THE WALL

VISION QUEST Contemporary Photography is pleased to present the photographic exhibition by Michel Kirch “Beyond the wall".

The photographs in this exhibition are part of a project completed in Israel in 2002 during the second Intifada when the wall was erected to separate the Palestinians from the Israelis .For Michel Kirch
the only frontier remaining free of walls or electric fences was the beach at Tel Aviv where life appeared to run its daily routine... Here tensions disappeared in the peaceful distances; they relaxed in the setting sun as if to celebrate an evasive illusion of peace. But while he was recording these peaceful and paradox images, on the other frontier, beyond the wall, the intifada was raging.
Not only the poetic dimension but the rigour, the essence and balance of these photographs make them a metaphor of the fragility and solitude of mankind for, as Roberto Mutti writes in one of the essays in the catalogue, “this is not a reportage on the beauty of nature, the sense of space that characterises it has a much deeper human and political significance. Closed in on itself by that wall which was built as a defence but soon became a paradoxical sign of self exclusion, the state of Israel seems immobilised in the opposition of those who are destined to live next to it. But nature cannot be harnessed and the beach at Tel Aviv becomes the symbol of a way out not as distant as one would perhaps imagine. The echoes  of the Intifada, the harshness of the conflict, the exasperation of religious intransigence do not  seem to arrive here because no wall can reach the beach, no barbed wire can harness the clouds, no obstacle capture the waves.  Michel Kirch does not forget the Wall (how many Walls has humanity known without learning their futility?), but wants to broaden his view to see beyond it.  Thus he can capture the waves creating a sequence of concentric circles on the sand as if to follow the figure of a young boy playing with the water, he can capture the man quietly walking on the waterline followed by his dog, he can stop and see a back-lit jetty where fishing rods emerge while a flock of birds passes compact in the sky”.

One hundred years from the birth of the city of Tel Aviv but unfortunately at such a difficult and painful moment in the history of mankind, we present “Beyond the Wall” with Michel’s invitation to “always find the strength to look for another way, as testimony for a possibility of peace, a way of seeing beyond the wall…….”

VISION QUEST Contemporary Photography
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