Naomi Leshem: Lizette

Once a month at the same time of day, between September 2007 and October 2008, Naomi Leshem (born in Israel in 1963) photographed the view from the balcony of her beautician, Lizette, in Petah Tikva.

The uncanny similarity of the photographs requires us to embrace a mode of slow contemplation: we observe the emergence of new neighborhoods next to the steadily expanding Segula cemetery, while in the foreground, a terrain turning various shades of green in the winter and brown in the summer reminds us of the inexorable passage of time.    

Thus, in a series born from Leshem's regular visits to her beautician, the artist focuses her gaze – as in so many of her other works – on life itself, and particularly on the way in which life and death are inextricably intertwined, inseparable aspects of the same image, with no clear beginning, middle or end.

Displaying these photographs in the Rhythm of Life gallery bestows a further dimension on the perennial dialogue between life and death, the concrete and the abstract, the personal and the collective, which reverberates among the objects on view here.

All the photographs are digital prints and are displayed here by courtesy of the artist and Noga Gallery of Contemporary Art, Tel Aviv.

Lizette, Midday, July 2008

Lizette, Midday, March 2008

Lizette, Midday, December 2007