Artists House Shmuel Hanagid 12 94592 Jerusalem Israël
Binyamin Reich's exhibition is the fruit of his wanderings through the realms of his childhood in the Mea Shearim neighborhood of Jerusalem. It displays a collection of documentary photographs, childhood photographs, family photographs, and anonymous photographs. With a sense of yearning, the adult Reich returns as a suitor to these regions, documenting this world of others with his camera. Childhood becomes the object of desire and its photographic representation is testimony to possible ideal perfection. The element of strangeness is a thread woven through the photographs; it is possible to identify the sense of otherness coming to the surface along with the expressed effort to belong. Placing the childhood photographs alongside the documentary photographs confronts the personal and the collective experience. The past placed next to the present exposes the fracture of childhood, the sense of disconnection and the search for individuality that characterizes Reich's work.. "Hast Thou Forsaken Me?" Is taken from the verse "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" (Psalms 22:1). The question reveals the sadness and astonishment rising from an unrealized promise for a childhood that is safe and protected in the shade of the Torah and faith.