Places that time will never forget
You could say that Ori Gersht lives in the past, but unlike other artists who may make reference to their heritage in some small, personal way, Gersht is more like an art detective/historian. Take Evaders, his latest series of photographs, currently on view at Mummery + Schnelle in London. At first glance you see an amazing landscape, shrouded in mist, the colors bright and sharp, reminiscent, perhaps, of the allegorical paintings of the 19th century German Romantics. But when you learn that this isn’t just any old mountain, that it’s the Pyrenes, and that it’s not just any old passage within the Pyrenes, that it’s the Lister Route, the photographs can’t help but carry deeper significance.
Running along the border between France and Spain, the Lister Route has “a long history of smuggling,” most notoriously during WWII when many people used it to escape Nazi occupied France. Gersht doesn’t need to tell you anything else; You can practically picture the small, huddled figures passing silently through the unforgiving landscape. One of these figures was “the critic and philosopher Walter Benjamin, who committed suicide after he found the border closed on the day he attempted to cross it in September 1940.” Gerhst’s photography is certainly strong enough to stand on its own, but it’s markedly more powerful when you know what you’re looking at.
“Places That Were Not” at Mummery + Schnelle until February 27, 2010.
