Maria Sturm - Common and uncommon places Israel
I photographed the series “Common and Uncommon Places in Israel” in April/May 2010. I was visiting two friends of mine, who were doing a semester abroad at Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design in Jerusalem.
So during my stay I went to visit some classes at their school and we also rented a car and did a round trip through Israel.
We visited the Negev, the Golan Heights, Lake Kinneret, the Red Sea and the Dead Sea, a couple of cities and some more. We’ve basically seen and stopped by many touristy places and I started to photograph. It was the formal and quiet scenes, the colors, the structure and geometry that caught my eye, although I wasn’t looking for these qualities in the first place. I chose every picture very intuitively.
Even though, most of my work consists of portraits, I take a lot of landscape pictures, as I’m often attracted by its symmetry and harmony.
The school of thought I’m coming from requires an explanation or a narrative for series of photographs. So it’s hard for me to combine random images and call it a series. Although many artists do so, I somehow think that’s not enough.
And maybe I need to let loose of it a little bit more often. I think I did just that with the Israel series. It’s the only series I’m showing in my portfolio, that maybe has no deeper meaning or a rich background, as it’s basically just kept together geographically.
All images © Maria Sturm
