AMIT, Tami - Insomnia

"The work of still photographer Tami Amit generates various shifts from what we know as staged photography. The scale of her work calls to mind cinematic and fashion productions, from which she extracts a discreet dimension which charges the images with qualities of horror; discreet due to the fact that this staged photography is not conveyed by the images themselves. Ostensibly, this is a replication of the Hollywood approach to the status of the camera, where the actors perform their roles as if there were no camera facing them. Unlike the Hollywood camera, however, the transparent presence in Amit's case enables her camera to function as hidden, as if it were shooting out of a hiding-place. Moreover, Amit's photography displays an affinity with moments of postconceptual art, such as the work of CINDY SHERMAN. In her 'Untitled Film Stills' series Sherman concocted scenes from nonexistent movies, depicting herself as the heroine. In light of this affinity, Amit's work – mainly photographs of women, usually one woman per frame in a scene from a film never made – may be regarded as the result of self-representation, especially female self-representation understood as fiction, with its entire range of performative aspects." (publisher's note)

"Tami Amit’s work is that of an extraordinary, impressive and disquieting photographer of women. Fragile, fearful, overcome (by the sorrow or by the pain?), romantic and excessive, dispas- sionate, worried or remorseful, the women whom Tami Amit photographs carefullly and intuitively are always captured in a dazed, dreamlike state, expressing solitude, waiting and aban- don...An introspection of appearances is invented." (Alexandre Castant)

About the photographer (*1972, Tel Aviv):

Education
1994-1997 BFA Parsons school of design, Paris and New York
1990-1991 Camera obscura, Tel-Aviv
Solo Exhibitions
2010 „Sisters“, Museum Petah-Tikva, Israel, Curator: Ory Dessau
2008 "Motion Pictures", raw art gallery, Tel aviv
2005 „Still waiting for that kiss“, Video projection, Art Projects Gallery, Tel-Aviv
2004 „Room service“, Dvir gallery, Tel Aviv
2001 „Sense of Space“, Kunsthiis de permanent Gallery, Groningen, Holland
2001 "Alice in wonderland", Rosenfeld Gallery,Tel-Aviv
1998 „The 50‘s interiors“, portraits,The Museum of Israeli Art, Ramat Gan