DROR MAAYAN
My art is my way of life, my identity, my native tongue.
I am a painter and photographer born and raised in Israel. I exhibit extensively and work with academic, public, and private institutions. I was always intrigued by material art emerging on different surfaces and textures, changing and deteriorating, and eventually dying and disappearing. Naturally, graffiti became a subject of my interest and I started to document them around the world twenty years ago. In 2011 my photographs of the graffiti on the Israeli-Palestinian separation barrier, taken as a part of an international project, were published as a book, ‘Facing the Wall’ (Walther König, Köln).
For over two and a half decades, I worked with the most advanced digital cameras. Then, several years ago, I discovered alternative photography.
I moved back to 19th-century photography techniques and was completely captivated by the possibilities they revealed to me. Recently, I opened the first and only natural light “Victorian” studio in Israel.
Dror Maayan.‘Selfies 1.1’, Analog Print from Wet Collodion Negatives Painted By Hand, 30×24 cm, 2017
Everything about these old photographic techniques is physical and sensible. They involve your total self; to be at one with the world around you, the real material world. To explore matter, textures, human senses, light and darkness. Endlessly. There is a Sisyphean precision in staging the composition, or recognizing it in the field, focusing on every small detail. The smell, the touch, the dirt, and the magical mixture of different chemicals coalesce in a miraculous moment when the image finally emerges.
It is sometimes surprising and powerful because it is not perfect. I shoot with authentic antique wooden cameras; big heavy, pieces of art themselves. These relics come to life again in my studio, echoing their former lives and masters. Through their lenses, past and present, like parallel worlds, merge into new frames, my frames.
It is not my intention to rekindle 19th-century photographic techniques. They are rather a platform,
a starting point.
I continue working on the plates, manipulating them by hand, by paint and chemicals, by pen, by a sharp tip.
At times, this creates tension between original photograph and artistic touch. They are not reproductions of the real world, but integrative pictures built of several layers whose interplay reflects my impression of it.
‘Israeli Cowboy’ Series, Analog Print Painted By Hand from Wet Collodion Negative, 30×24 cm, 2016
I work in series, though my subjects vary: from portraits and nudes, to landscapes and still life. I do not believe in one beautiful perfect frame. I think the power of the beauty of each frame is in its imperfection, its own unique character. It is impossible to achieve two identical copies made by hand. The imperfections are born of the process.
The process to create these photographs is, for me, like the process of life. It is always to explore, to tell a story, to make an intimate discovery.
By merging old into new, by blurring the line between photography and painting, by converting an antique technique into contemporary and up-to-date artistic work, by failing or succeeding, I take my own personal journey.
