Alexander Mendelevich

Tel Aviv’s Girls

[ EPF 2014 FINALIST ]

ESSAY CONTAINS EXPLICIT CONTENT

This is a work in progress. This series is about Tel Aviv, girls, bicycles, independence, despondency, loneliness and fashion.

Is this a reality or my attitude to reality? I do not know. And I don’t really care about it. I do not want to be held hostage by the words. Photography has a stunning paradox to combine documentary and trickery. And if any fantasy comes from our world, so everything is real, at least feeling, and that’s what matters to me.

Tel Aviv’s girls in the photos are like immersed in a dream, like a dream that is a little strange, a little absurd, but feels usual. I wanted to combine, in a collective image of their daily attributes such as bicycles, that showing elegance together with dresses, amusement, transport and physical strength, and helmets that mean protection and some mask at the same time, and situations at home, decor with a touch of hopelessness and boredom.

They are not marginal, not revolutionaries, not rebels and nihilists. They’re just young Tel Aviv girls from middle class around 30 years old.

I take a hero and I build a frame around it, I build the expression. The surface and frame borders are shown and it’s fantastic that it is actually possible to define what is the reality behind the frame or more exactly it leaves space for imagination.

This discomfort, distortion and weirdness – it’s not a protest, it’s more just a passionate, naive desire for some magic.

 

 

Bio

Born in the North Caucasus, studied in Jerusalem, now I live, I love, I create, I feel, am happy and am sad in south Tel Aviv.

 

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Alexander Mendelevich