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| | | From Newspaper to Space | | | For a decade photographer Reli Avrahami and journalist Avner Avrahami's page, Relatively Speaking, was published in Haaretz. Recently it moved to Maariv. The two visited the homes of hundreds of families in Israel, documenting their history, way of life, homes, beliefs, and dreams.
Following numerous requests sent to the paper's editorial board, the definition of the page was expanded to "all those living under one roof." Thus the gates opened to those sharing rented apartments, incarcerated in prison, living in detox facilities, members of pre-army communes, etc. The photographs are a point of departure for the accompanying text, which takes the reader back to the photograph for additional and deeper inspection. The journey, intended to reveal the face of the Israeli, manages, in fact, to shed light on what is different and surprising, hiding within the banality of quotidian life. Relatively Speaking's uniform format underscores the differences between human beings and gives insight to that which is different within the uniformity despite the randomness of the encounters that are devoid of any preliminary research, and which do not promise an inspiring story.
The personal stories arouse questions about individual and collective identity in Israeli society that suffers from national, religious, economic and ethnic schisms, thoughts about the fundamental nature of the current definition of family, and reflections on the meaning of "home," etc.
For the exhibit the family photographs were enlarged and additional information was presented to the spectators. The text accompanying the family photograph in the section was exchanged for a museum scene, and the weekly encounter with a family which the page offered its readers was exchanged for an exhibition space that displays photographs of numerous families. The color photographs make it possible to observe the architecture that has developed in Israel over the years, both in the center of the country and the periphery, in both urban and rural localities, raise questions about Israeli design and fashion, and investigate the basic sense of happiness, as it was examined in the page's final paragraph: "Happiness index from 1 to 10".
Curator: Galia Gur Zeev
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