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Exhibitions: 

Hindsight, Herzliya Museum of Contemporary Art, Sep–Dec 2017 

Curator: Aya Lurie 

Assistant curator: Dana Raz 

Cinematography: Avi Levy 

Video installation: Pro-AV 

Sound: Binya Reches 

Photographic printing: Rea – The Print House 

Continents and Faces, Artists’ Residence Herzliya, Sep–Nov 2017 

Curator: Ran Kasmy-Ilan 

Video Installation: Pro-AV 

Sound: Binya Reches 

Photographic printing: Rea – The Print House 

Artist’s Book: 

Graphic design: Rachel Kinrot & Zohar Koren 

Image processing: Rea – The Print House 

Printing: AR Print 

Text editing: Asaf Schurr, Orna Yehudaioff (Maor’s text) 

Hebrew copyediting: Rachel Perets 

English translation: Einat Adi (Maor’s text), Mor Ilan 

English copyediting: Maya Shimony 

The Suicide by Jorge Luis Borges 

Hebrew translation: Tal Nitzan 

English translation: Alastair Reid 

Hadas Maor’s text is also included in Aya Lurie (ed.), Trait pour 

trait: Portrait of the Museum, exh. cat. (Herzliya: Herzliya Museum 

of Contemporary Art, 2017), in conjunction with Yair Barak’s 

exhibition Hindsight on view at the Herzliya Museum concurrently 

with his show at the Artists’ Residence Herzliya. 

This book is number 

of an edition limited to 125 copies 

© 2017 All rights reserved to the artist.

CONTENTS 

POST-MORTEM / HADAS MAOR 9 

Hindsight (Horizontal) 13 

Hindshight (Vertical) 19 

ECHO CHAMBER / RAN KASMY-ILAN 25 

Echo (After Borges) 29 

Mirror Therapy 33 

Slough 41 

TOO CLOSE TO CALL / KEREN GOLDBERG 55 

Ahoy! 61 

All Inclusive 67 

Tilt 75 

Four Times Blue 79

To my beloved mother and father

Hadas Maor 

Yair Barak’s video project, Hindsight 

(Horizontal) (2016), begins with a horizontal, 

continuous pan motion. The camera glides 

on a surface, reaches its end, stops, descends 

slightly, stops, and continues once again, as 

though executing a continuous horizontal 

scan from one end to another and back 

again. Moderato cantabile—moderately and 

melodiously. In this manner, line by line, 

section by section, a large plywood board, 

made up of joined-together boards with 

innumerable marks on them—splotches 

of paint and other marks, drawn corners 

alongside random drips of paint—is revealed 

to the viewer in one continuous, endless 

motion. The words “Height: 2.40” appear 

in cursive handwriting, then the camera 

changes direction again. Two strips of 

masking tape indicate location, and opposite 

direction. Over time, and as the motion 

evolves, the surface becomes increasingly 

dense and intensive. Technical comments 

that are revealed on the board during the 

filming take on a semantic meaning. The 

organized and arranged merges with the 

overflowing, invasive and diminishing. A 

Kupferman-like quality suddenly emerges 

from the surface, and suddenly the work 

seems like a scan of a wonderful work of art. 

The wooden boards in question used 

to cover an entire wall in the studio of Uri 

Lifshitz, who died in 2011. * Yair Barak, who 

arrived at the studio of the artist, whom 

he had not known personally, and saw 

the wall in the aftermath of his death—in 

hindsight—immediately understood that 

he had to do something about it. Out of 

this insight were born the two works on 

view at the exhibition, each representing 

different but complementary treatments of 

Continents and Faces :: Hindsight 

9

the same object: horizontal and vertical; 

static and dynamic; distant and invasive. 

The large wall of photographs displayed 

on the concrete wall at the entrance of the 

museum—Hindsight (Vertical) (2016)—seems to 

reproduce the wall that Barak discovered at 

the artist’s studio. The photographed frames 

are not identical to the distribution of the 

conjoined wooden boards, and a close look at 

the photographs reveals the seams between 

the boards. At first sight, the work seems like 

a reproduction of an original—except that, 

from the outset, the original in this case is 

informed by excess, is something left over, 

with no independent value, and consequently 

the act of reproduction is distorted. In 

the Hindsight (Horizontal) video work, the 

archeological, medical, and forensic gazes 

on the same excess appear to blend together. 

The work is filmed in a single shot—refined, 

yet also decisive. Line. Stain. Motion. The 

structuring of the mechanical procedure 

of the work, the continuous, unbroken 

movement, and the repeated changes of 

direction are so precise, that they allow 

sensuous, emotional, and conceptual aspects 

to percolate and emerge from the work, and 

a poetic quality to be revealed. 

Barak’s work explores the relationships 

that are drawn between painting, 

photography, and video; between various 

aspects of action; between immobility and 

movement—movement that comes into 

being through the act of painting or that of 

photography, when facing a stretched canvas 

or an inanimate wall. The work of Lifshitz, 

who was a quintessential postmodernist, 

was predominantly figurative and narrative, 

particularly in his later years. The wall that 

served as an underlying foundation of his 

work has the appearance of an abstract 

modernist work. The camera’s movement 

in front of the still wall in Barak’s work 

is meticulously calculated. The body’s 

movement in the space is replaced by 

the horizontal or vertical orientation of 

the camera’s movement; choreography is 

replaced by cinematography. 

In addition, Barak’s work suggests the 

notion of post-mortem. The term originated 

in the second half of the nineteenth century, 

when the attitude toward the dead and dead 

bodies was fundamentally different from 

today, and photographing individuals after 

death was very common. However, this is 

neither a post-mortem of Uri Lifshitz, nor 

of his paintings. Barak’s work is not about 

Lifshitz the person, or about his artistic 

legacy. Rather, it dwells on the traces that 

the artistic process leaves behind; on vitality 

versus mortality; on hope versus insight. 

It is a post-mortem of the action itself. 

The work’s gaze is not a romantic one in 

pursuit of the sublime, but a melancholic 

gaze that observes emptiness and absence 

with pain and sobriety. In this regard, 

the work continues Barak’s longstanding 

preoccupation with the notion of death. 

A few years ago, Barak’s work began 

to feature book covers. In some instances, 

only the flyleaf was visible, as in the 2014 

work with the cryptic inscription “To the 

boys who will never come back,” rendered by 

its display as a kind of tombstone. On other 

occasions, the entire cover of the book 

was visible—as in Thomas Mann’s three 

book covers, or in the stone work I’d Rather 

Not (all 2014), that likens itself to a book 

cover and/or a tombstone. At the same 

time, Barak’s work also began to feature 

various historical monuments that had lost 

their significance, and iconic architectural 

buildings that stand in silent testament of 

past iniquities. These works and others deal 

with the passage of time, with the relics of 

history, with questions of memory, oblivion 

and commemoration, and with the ways by 

which culture obliterates itself. However, 

irrespective of Barak’s focus, be it books, 

graves, pieces of land, or various historical 

monuments, he ultimately reaches the 

objects and treats them in the aftermath— 

as a post-mortem, if you will. Not when the 

objects are at their prime, but after they 

have declined and become inconsequential. 

In this respect, Barak’s work deals not 

only with the process of depletion, with 

cultural eradication and rapid obsolescence, 

but also with the deceptive nature of the 

photographic medium itself. Photography— 

which has altered the face of culture and 

various modes of thinking but has also, 

much like the historical monuments, lost its 

validity—has been voided of content, dying 

while at its peak, to be left today as an 

empty digital shell. In effect, Barak’s work 

presents the act of photography as a silent 

testament, one that ultimately is precluded 

from recounting anything. 

* In May 2016, the exhibition Uri Lifshitz: Flesh 

and Blood was opened at Herzliya Museum of 

Contemporary Art, to mark the fifth anniversary 

of the artist’s death (curators: Aya Lurie, Ori 

Drumer). It featured more than 150 of the artist’s 

works—oil paintings, drawings, etchings, and 

sculptures—from his early, 1960s works to those 

that he created in his final days. 

10 Continents and Faces :: Hindsight 

Continents and Faces :: Hindsight 11

Hindsight (Horizontal), 2016, HD video, 7:26 min.





Hindsight (Vertical), 2016, archival pigment print, 2x10 m.

20 Continents and Faces :: Hindsight Continents and Faces :: Hindsight 21

Ran Kasmy-Ilan 

The tale of Icarus spiraling out of the maze, 

soaring on wings constructed by his father, 

is the story of the ruination we inflict on 

ourselves through the sin of arrogance. The 

oafish son living in the shadow of his genius 

father suddenly decides to refuse the voice 

of authority, climbing to the sky and paying 

the consequent price. Yair Barak’s solo 

exhibition Continents and Faces concerns the 

relations between fathers and sons as they 

teeter on a delicate balance. Fathers must 

direct their sons, not stand in their way. 

Sons must disengage from their fathers, but 

not destroy them in the process. Both sides 

need to be strong enough to survive the 

experience intact. Both echo and reflect the 

other. This thorny relationship lies at the 

heart of the exhibition. 

The child’s first relationship is with his 

mother. Mothers are nature itself, providing 

a protective bond that is an enclosed 

sphere just for two. It is the father figure 

that disrupts this couplehood, a presence 

informing them of an entire world of rules 

and authorities awaiting outside, of the 

possible awareness that stems from a process 

of differentiation. Who am I? Who is not 

myself? Who makes me what I am? There is 

no awareness without releasing the murky 

warmth of the womb, without letting go of 

insentience to become aware. 

Fathers initiate their sons. They guide, 

love, and protect, but also bring ruin and 

rage. The initiation process is created with a 

father both constructive and destructive. Sons 

powerfully echo their fathers, both in their 

Continents and Faces :: Nothingness To No-one 

25

presence and their absence. Like light rays 

gifted young violinists. Each in turn, the 

present. Clearly, the impulse to play is still 

present an old man. He suddenly swallows 

or sound waves, the resonance of the father 

young players step forward for several 

there, strong as ever, and there is no escaping 

saliva, takes in a large lungful of air, and 

floods the body and is then reflected back. 

moments, performing as he corrects them. 

it. The right hand holds a ghost bow, arcing 

shouts. His throat swells with the effort, the 

Fathers attach wings to their sons, but 

But Barak’s camera does not focus on 

up and down with varying speed and force, 

air is squeezed from his lungs, vibrating his 

also rigorously restrict their movement. And 

them, but on Taub himself, specifically on 

vibrating the length of invisible strings. 

vocal chords as they stretch powerfully by 

so, it was something other than arrogance 

his physical reactions to the music. He is 

Vibrations are transferred through the 

the muscles of his larynx. This human voice 

that brought down Icarus, perhaps his 

the embodiment of the quintessential sage, 

bridge and the soundpost, into the body of a 

box, located between the pharynx to the tip 

failed defiance against his father, Daedalus. 

entrusted with passing on the wisdom of 

nonexistent violin, and through it onward. 

of the trachea, shoots the words out to the 

His flight to the heavens, far from the path 

generations. He is the voice of authority, and 

The absence of the violin seems like a 

world. The echo of his cries reflects against 

allotted by his father, is an attempt to 

he has the role of showing the way forward. 

physical pain, evident in the left hand as 

the walls and back, revealing he stands in an 

transcend (his father), but also desperately 

This is an initiation ceremony, one where the 

it occasionally reaches up to massage the 

empty space. He is the audience hearing the 

try to part from him. To leave the maze of 

old voice of experience instructs and informs 

right shoulder. It absorbs the motion of an 

shouted echo as it bounces off walls like a 

this relationship. But how far can Icarus 

those that will follow. 

arm reaching out again and again to seek 

mirror of sound waves. 

go with a father such as Daedalus? His 

Two people face each other as the music 

out a limb no longer there. The urge to 

The monologue he yells out at the top 

descent into the sea, engulfed in the waters 

is played. Potential versus experience. 

play does not consider the limitations of the 

of his lungs are words of poetry—aptly, as 

of the great mother’s womb, can be seen as 

One has a lifetime of playing stretched 

human body. It demands satisfaction, but the 

poetry itself is the sound box of language. 

relinquishing the father figure, rejecting it. 

before him, while the other has a lifetime 

stimulation it requires cannot be satisfied. 

An internal space where the vibrations 

Barak’s exhibition is divided into two 

behind him. Their meeting point is the 

Phantom pain resounds throughout 

of language are enhanced, where the 

spaces that work in synchronicity: that of 

violin. As he sits with his back to us, Taub 

the body, a reminder of a limb lost, one felt 

fluctuations of the simplest words are 

the father, and that of the son. The two 

gestures dramatically to a young violinist, 

particularly strongly as the body continues 

heightened. In poetry, every word echoes 

territories are separate and stand side by 

demonstrating with his body how the music 

to hold on to its memory. Today, some people 

back, like a scream in an empty room. 

side, taking turns in seniority. When one 

should be performed. He notices the young 

deal with this pain using feedback methods 

The words are from The Suicide (1975) by 

space is active, the other stands silent. 

man swaying with his instrument, even 

that reflect lost limbs to the patients. 

Jorge Luis Borges. 

Perhaps listening, perhaps standing still, 

letting it lead him, so Taub takes a forceful 

The existent limb faces a mirror, and its 

The Suicide was written by Borges at the 

or disappearing altogether. They cannot 

grip of the violin scroll. Merely grasping 

reflection presents the missing limb. During 

age of 76, but this is not the monologue of 

function simultaneously. They alternately 

the small end of the instrument is enough 

treatment, to the extent of human visual 

an old man, it is no song of twilight or the 

flicker and fall mute in an endless loop, with 

to allow him full control of the body before 

abilities, the amputated limb appears to have 

frail voice of parting. The speaker is not 

a single wall between them. 

him. He holds the violin, and through it the 

remained intact. During this master class, 

abandoning the world. Quite the opposite: 

student, leaning forward to search out his 

the violin provides a point of reflection—the 

he is the master of this empty cosmos, and 

gaze. With this firm grasp, as the music 

point of contact and healing that is also an 

it is he who devastates and destroys it. “I 

Daedalus 

continues, he sets limits to the motion of 

transcendence. The student looks up to have 

immovable screen. 

shall erase the pyramids, the medallions, 

the continents and faces. I shall erase the 

The video Mirror Therapy (2016), presents 

his gaze caught by the eyes of the teacher. 

accumulated past. I shall make dust of 

an old man sitting in a semi-empty hall, 

listening to violin playing. This is violinist 

Moments later, Taub releases the violin. 

He conducts his master class without 

Icarus 

history, dust of dust.”*—yells out Borges. 

He turns his back on all that preceded him, 

and teacher Chaim Taub, who served as the 

a violin of his own, like a captain without 

In the two-channel video Echo (After Borges) 

erasing the history of the human tribe, 

concertmaster of the Israeli Philharmonic 

his ship. The violin, an inseparable part 

(2017), a young man is filmed both in profile 

wishing for certain oblivion, to nullification. 

Orchestra for two decades. He is a 

of his body for over eight decades, a limb 

and frontally in a close-up focusing on 

His ends his call with the words—“I bequeath 

mythological figure in the Israeli music 

of his limbs, is no longer there. The hand 

his neck. He is wearing a gray dress shirt, 

nothingness to no one.” Not only does he 

scene. We witness one of his master classes, 

that held the bow, slicing through the air of 

its two top buttons open and framing his 

leave nothing for those to follow, there will 

held during the Keshet Eilon workshops—a 

packed halls, now grips a walking stick. But 

Adam’s apple. Although his beard is streaked 

be none to inherit. This is a monologue 

music center that promotes and nurtures 

the violin no longer held is still distinctly 

with gray, the little revealed of him does not 

orated with the pathos of market square 

26 Continents and Faces :: Nothingness To No-one 

Continents and Faces :: Nothingness To No-one 27

speeches, one devoid of all people. There is 

“other” except the speaker himself, the only 

one to hear the echoed cry as it rings against 

the walls of empty space. 

Acting against the world as it is, the 

world that cannot be borne, suicide is the 

fulfillment of absolute freedom (“To die: 

to sleep; No more; and by a sleep to say 

we end the heart-ache and the thousand 

natural shocks that flesh is heir to”**). But 

alongside the pathos of the shouted words, 

it is this faceless cry—the cry where the 

body’s presence relies on a rising and falling 

Adam’s apple, on just a voice box—this cry 

that teaches of a frantic desire to live. To 

live differently, fully, free of the bounds 

circumscribed by others. 

Facing the video, on the wall between 

the two exhibition halves, stand a series of 

photographs titled Slough (2016). The center 

of each of these manipulated photographs 

presents the base of a monument. Each is 

detached from the statue above it, from the 

industry of commemoration of historical 

figures and events. Just as all monuments are 

fated to be emptied of content, to lose their 

associations, to be shattered. Bronze busts 

of leaders will be brought down and melted 

to make cannons, stone sculptures made into 

paving tiles, cathedrals turned to mosques, 

and then repurposed into museums. 

Shapes will recur endlessly year after year, 

replicated and duplicated, appropriated for 

various uses, reflected and reorganized in 

order to undermine its source, to challenge 

the very existence of the father. The base 

is also detached from its environment in 

each of the photographs. It floats on a black 

background. It is merely a façade, as if a 

lump of rock had been hollowed out. Only 

a thin shell remains, the molted skin of a 

monument, dead stony crust. 

Like father, like son. The son creates his 

father through the actions of life, the acts of 

creativity. He forms the future and changes 

the way we perceive the past. Like rays of 

light, like waves of sound, so does the echo 

of our father’s image permeate us, then 

reflect back from us as we divert it from 

its course. 

* From Selected Poems by Jorge Luis Borges, 

translated by Alastair Reid. 

** William Shakespeare, Hamlet (Act III, Scene I). 

Echo (After Borges), 2017, HD video loop 

28 Continents and Faces :: Nothingness To No-one

30 Continents and Faces :: Nothingness To No-one Continents and Faces :: Nothingness To No-one 31

The Suicide / Jorge Luis Borges 

Not a single star will be left in the night. 

The night will not be left. 

I will die and, with me, 

the weight of the intolerable universe. 

I shall erase the pyramids, the medallions, 

the continents and faces. 

I shall erase the accumulated past. 

I shall make dust of history, dust of dust. 

Now I am looking on the final sunset. 

I am hearing the last bird. 

I bequeath nothingness to no one. 

Mirror Therapy, 2016, HD video, 6:30 min. 

32 Continents and Faces :: Nothingness To No-one







Slough, 2016, chromaluxe transfer on aluminum, 50x40 cm.


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51

Keren Goldberg 

In recent years, Yair Barak’s photographs 

have been characterized by a certain 

stillness and almost complete lack of human 

figures. Locked stores, modern villas, 

wrapped plants, frozen tombstones, and 

signed books—all standing at attention, as if 

in a desperate effort at self-immortalization. 

However, his current body of work boldly 

introduces human figures. These are not 

just any human figures, but that of men; 

and not just any men, but the artist himself, 

alongside the legendary violinist Chaim 

Taub, while in the background loom the 

painter Uri Lifshitz and the writer Jorge 

Luis Borges. Although the works themselves 

can be experienced without any prior 

familiarity, this specificity is of value, as 

these men create a kind of universal portrait 

of aging, a creative-biographical horizon 

stretched between vital continuity and the 

desire to leave traces, and between turning 

one’s back on life. 

The exhibition, comprised of two 

concurrent chapters, continues Barak’s 

exploration into the possibility (or 

impossibility) of temporal continuity, the 

very possibility to logically tie between 

past and present. His 2014 exhibition at 

the Tel Aviv Museum of Art—Moving Away 

from Something He Stares At—was haunted 

by Walter Benjamin’s well-known Angel of 

History, inspired by Paul Klee’s monoprint 

Angelus Novus (“New Angel,” 1920). Stricken, 

the angel looks back in astonishment at 

the ruins of history and the horrors of the 

past, his wings already entangled in the 

winds of future, forbidding him to linger 

any longer. Much has been said about 

the significance of this image in relation 

to Barak’s previous works. The late Nili 

Continents and Faces :: Appendix 

55

Goren, the exhibition’s curator, wrote in the 

of the wall is bared in all its glory. But even 

“If your photos aren’t good enough, 

particularly present in his botanical gardens 

catalogue: “…photography […] is regarded by 

here, only scraps and paint blotches are 

you’re not close enough”—this famous quote 

series, where plants encased in plastic or 

Yair Barak to be the process of moving away, 

actually revealed. They exceed the frame, 

by war photographer Robert Capa is given 

hemp are covered to the last leaf. As with 

rather than closer. In his works, he examines 

not the photographic one, but the absent 

a new meaning in view of the concerns 

the plants, protected from a climate they are 

various photographic distances—which 

presence of Lifshitz’s painting frame. 

regarding the credibility of his most 

unaccustomed to, so are the yachts put to 

shift between advance and withdrawal, 

However, no bells or whistles are revealed 

renowned work, The Falling Soldier (1936), 

rest until next summer, until their “season” 

while keeping the gaze fixed on the still 

here, but only history’s margins, from which 

showing a Republican soldier moments 

arrives. Now, the luxury boats are idle, sitting 

object, like locking the sight on a target 

no distance gaze, no vertical perspective, 

before falling to his death after being shot 

silent like covered bodies or whales washed 

which threatens to allude nothing but the 

and no centralized composition will ever 

during the Spanish Civil War. Some claim 

to shore. This method of manipulating the 

Zeitgeist—Barak’s photography provokes the 

successfully construct a coherent image. 

the photograph was taken dozens of miles 

photographic subjects is reminiscent of 

possibility of forgetting.”* 

In the video work Echo (After Borges), Barak 

from the battlefield. If so, it seems that 

Barak’s new series Slough, where pedestals of 

But what is the role of the somewhat 

confronts not only his viewers’ unfulfilled 

proximity is not a necessary condition for 

statues and monuments, lacking the actual 

worn image of Angelus Novus in these 

desire to break out of the frame, but also 

the creation of a “good” photograph, which 

objects they are meant to hold, are flattened 

current works? Here, the temporal distance, 

that of his hero. The artist, appearing in 

over time will become an immortalized 

to float on a black background. With this 

that Zeitgeist threatening forgetfulness, 

the video, is akin to an orator delivering 

image of political struggle. But can one 

visual resemblance in mind, we return to the 

is given a concrete, spatial appearance, 

a speech in a city square, to be heard 

get too close? Capa, himself killed while 

yachts as vessels—heroic pedestals for their 

just like that of the figures it presents. 

throughout the streets: the words of Borges’s 

marching across a minefield—camera in 

missing owners, who are now secured in the 

This is a formal kind of concreteness, one 

short poem The Suicide, declaring a heroic 

hand—would probably reply “yes.” In Barak’s 

warmth of their homes. 

of photographic frames, of perspectives 

suicide that consumes with it the entire 

work, the spatial proximity to the image is 

The other photographs included in this 

and defined power relations between 

world. But the hero does not stare at the 

the incarnation of the temporal proximity 

chapter were taken in Istanbul, mediating 

photographer, viewer, and subject. Moreover, 

horizon, beyond the cheering crowds. He is 

to death. It is an ominous, disturbing 

to some degree the fluid historical status 

the act of withdrawal is now replaced by that 

enclosed in a room where only the walls echo 

proximity, confronting the viewer with 

of the city—the previous capital of the 

of moving closer. While Barak’s previous 

his words. The viewer longs to see his facial 

what he would rather forget—the existential 

Ottoman Empire, and currently under 

works generally presented a centralized 

features, but is also imprisoned in the double 

comprehension that a person’s corporeal 

continuous terrorist attacks and at the 

composition, where the photographic object 

frame, which is fixated on his Adam’s apple. 

existence, his flesh and his remains, precede 

heart of a political conflict. Two very phallic 

was often “locked in target,” even if it was 

The same repeats in the video Mirror Therapy, 

his essence, his legacy, and his meaning. 

works undermine two famous Istanbul 

covered, duplicated, or manipulated, these 

in which the duplication manifests between 

In view of this disjointed biography 

architectural monuments: In Four Times Blue 

recent works confine the image, delimiting 

the body of the teacher (violinist Chaim 

present in Barak’s recent works, it is 

(2017) the four minarets of the Blue Mosque 

and interrupting it. The photographer gets 

Taub) and that of his students. The bodies of 

interesting to include in this current 

are merged together, and in Tilt (2017) the 

“too” close. Much like the Angel of History, 

the students are fragmented and disjointed, 

chapter several additional works, in a 

Obelisk of Theodosius is bent. 

the viewer wishes, in vain, that he could take 

much as that of Taub himself. The camera 

reflexive attempt to articulate a creative 

The Blue Mosque, boasting six minarets, 

a step back in order to complete the picture. 

isolates an arm, exposes a profile. We are left 

continuity (your perspective, as the reader, 

was built in the early seventeenth century 

In the video work Hindsight (Horizontal), 

with fragments of images. 

is also currently subject to rigid content 

by Sultan Ahmed I. At the time, the sultan 

the camera cedes nothing. It tenaciously 

As it is impossible to step back to view 

and editorial choices, much like that of 

suffered harsh criticism for his desire to 

continues its horizontal, automatic, almost 

the complete picture, it is also impossible to 

the works’ viewers). Indeed, many of the 

build an edifice comparable to Islam’s most 

autistic scanning of the photographic subject 

gather echoes of words to a heart-wrenching 

works in this chapter echo previous works 

sacred mosque—al-Masjid al-arām—the 

(stained and paint covered plywood boards 

speech; paint stains to a body of work; or 

of Barak. The series Ahoy! (2016) presents 

Great Mosque of Mecca, which was also 

against which Uri Lifshitz used to prop his 

pedagogical gestures to a musical legacy. 

yachts photographed in a Denmark winter, 

adorned with six minarets. For this act 

paintings in the studio) as it moves along 

The possibility to give meaning to a life 

wrapped and resting in their cradles on 

of arrogance (bringing to mind the sin of 

point-blank range. In the photographic 

coming to its end, or already gone, does 

the pier on the Baltic coast. This series is 

Icarus, discussed by Ran Kasmy-Ilan in 

installation Hindsight (Vertical), viewers seem 

exist, but is forever framed by the grasp of 

a direct development of the photographer’s 

this book), the sultan was forced to atone 

to receive what they wish for: the entirety 

the present. 

examination of revealment and concealment, 

by funding the construction of a seventh 

56 Continents and Faces :: Appendix 

Continents and Faces :: Appendix 57

minaret for the mosque in Mecca. Barak 

superimposes the four central minarets of 

this building to create an upright pendulum, 

a mirage of megalomania where all minarets 

are merged into one. In this duplication, 

the work is reminiscent of the series The 

Inner Circle (2013), depicting Stonehenge 

in England. Barak divided the site into 

eight circular segments, taking eight shots 

from within the inner circle, and another 

eight from outside looking in. All these are 

superimposed to echo the mystical aura of 

the stones’ arrangement. 

The history of the Obelisk of Theodosius 

is also stained by a certain hubris. 

Originally an ancient Egyptian monument, 

it was positioned in the Hippodrome of 

Constantinople by Emperor Theodosius I 

during the fourth century. The transport 

of the huge edifice required cutting it into 

three pieces. Throughout the years, only 

the top segment was preserved. The ruler, 

aspiring to commemorate his reign with the 

tallest of towers, had to make do with its tip. 

And, as if this punishment wasn’t sufficient, 

Barak further cuts this single remaining 

piece, the head of the phallus: the column 

is divided into three photographs, placed 

atop each other diagonally while forming a 

tilted obelisk; an Egyptian Tower of Pisa. 

The historical “amputation” of the tower, as 

well as its current technical slant, recalls 

Barak’s Jet (2013), where the celebrated and 

very grand Jet d’Eau fountain in Geneva is 

divided into two screens. One screen shows 

the water jet soaring upward to the fountain 

rim, while in the other the water falls to the 

base. The force and height of the stream, a 

monument to the capital of diplomacy, are 

diminished to dull repetition. 

The obelisk, minarets, and yachts 

interestingly relate to the two current 

exhibitions at the Herzliya Artists’ Residence 

and Herzliya Museum of Contemporary Art. 

They emphasize the spatial fragmentation 

so evident in both, the fragmentation which 

prevents the viewer, as well as the male 

protagonist, from finding meaning. The 

yachts are not only covered, but excised from 

context and left to hover with no backdrop; 

the obelisk is broken; and the mosque 

minarets are placed on top of each other 

until becoming one, lacking any solidity or 

actuality. In their absent representations, 

all these objects constitute a crippled 

testimony to the masculine pretention to 

immortality, to victory and perpetuation, 

to demonstrating strength and wealth, in 

both past and present. Obviously, these 

deconstructed, disjointed, and reconstructed 

images are in no way “true to reality.” 

And yet, it seems that Barak exposes the 

“forgery” in a manner that brings us closer 

to an immanent element of the photographic 

object. Meaning, the missing representation 

provides the object with an image of 

conceptual integrity. The disturbance tells 

more of the object and its history than its 

perfect and complete representation. One 

could say that moving away from the original 

image by duplicating, severing, or editing 

it, allows one to move closer. As with the 

Stonehenge photographs, near and far are 

congruent. They become one. 

These insights allow us to view All 

Inclusive (2017), a series of hotel room 

photographs, in a new light, although 

at first they seem estranged to the other 

featured works. These are photographs of 

photographs: posters advertising cheap 

Istanbul hotel rooms, hung outside in the 

sun for so long that their lamination began 

to peel and crack. The pictures could not 

keep on depicting the fake grandiosity 

of these cheap hotels, and began to 

consume themselves. The various bedroom 

arrangements—single bed, double bed with 

single, three singles—all become sickbeds of 

inflamed veins or IV lines. Here also a quasimasculine 

essence is present, but it is one of 

wrecked manhood. A masculinity that leads 

its nightly conquests/purchases to rooms 

rented by the hour, where lust is spent within 

minutes. “All Inclusive,” promises the title, 

but much like in these hotels, also in Barak’s 

works (and in life itself)—this promise is 

meant to be broken. 

* Nili Goren, “Revealment and Concealment in 

Photography,” Moving Away from Something He 

Stares At, Yair Barak (exhibition catalogue), 

Tel Aviv Museum of Art, 2014, p. 56. 



Ahoy!, 2016, chromaluxe transfer on aluminum, dimensions variable





All Inclusive #1–3, 2017, archival pigment print, 40x60 cm.

Tilt, 2017, archival pigment print, 20x45 cm.


77

Four Times Blue, 2017, archival pigment print, 80x60 cm.


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