Elsewhere

2020

elsewhere

“Elsewhere is a journey to the land that once was, the land, the place that lives in our imagination. It continues my research into looking at images to discover their hidden realities. I once wrote how the archaeology of the future is the archaeology of the image and its genealogy. These are black and white images, photochromes from nineteenth century historic Palestine, with a few images from Syria and Lebanon, colored in the past to give them a sense of reality. I collaged them, recreating the feeling of the place, as if one had traveled through a time machine and was suddenly present."

Steve Sabella

Arab48 | Liberating The Imagination From The Poisons of The Occupation

Interview with Asmaa’ Azaizeh

You say that imagination is the only bridge to reaching vision, and it is possible to trace the impact of imagination conceptually and in relation to space in much of your work. But if we are talking about the art of photography, then photography, in essence, is a tool to capture a moment of reality in contrast to drawing, for example, and thus it can contradict the imagination. What do you think?

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In my essay, Archaeology of the Future, I wrote how the fixing of light on paper and metal plates shocked the world. The resulting images bore the greatest resemblance to the illusion our eyes were able to see, yet they had nothing to do with reality as they created a world of their own. And because pictures create their own consciousness of the world, I wonder if the time has come to a stop focusing on the connection between images and the "real world." Maybe we need to explore the visual components of the world by looking into the image itself—just like in scientific research. We need to study images, the connections between them, their characteristics, and their origins by looking at them directly and not in constant comparison with reality. This may allow us to discover the infinite possibilities hidden in images. My relationship with the image is like being on a space odyssey, in search of understanding image formation. And since an image is part of the imagination, unlocking the code will allow us to see beyond our own reality.

arabic interview download

download the interview | English

Elsewhere consists of 20 plates of history. And like in Sabella's artwork, The Great March of Return, Elsewhere is the renaissance of culture and life constantly under erasure.