ronaldc_c
September 3rd, 2005, 01:53 PM
Forevermore: The Hansen Project from "about.com"
In the 1860s, Mrs. Von Keffenbrink-Ascherade, a German Moravian (Protestant) woman, was so moved by seeing the leper colony in Jerusalem that she set up a committee, bought land and built the JESUSHILFE, a leper hospital. Twenty years later in 1887 an enlarged building was added by architect Conrad Schick (1822-1901) a German missionary who planned and built many of the city developments of the time. The hospital continued to be staffed by German nursing sisters, even when Britain took over responsibility for Palestine after the First World War. During the 1948 Jewish-Arab war, the hospital became part of Israel, and its running was taken over by the Israeli government.
In 1873, Dr Gerhard Armauer Hansen in Norway discovered the cause of leprosy was a bacterium, and more recently the disease has been known as Hansen's disease and the hospital is the Hansen Hospital for Skin Disease. The Hansen Hospital is still apparently used as a clinic for some treatments of the disease, but is no longer residential but its rooms are largely empty, in many places left exactly as when they were last occupied. As well as the fine buildings, it also has 2 acres of notable gardens, also created in 1887 and taking their inspiration from the bible.
Shmuel Yosef Agnon (b 1988, Ukraine, d 1970), the first Israeli writer to receive the the Nobel Prize for Literature (shared with Jewish poet Nelly Sachs) in 1966, used the hospital as the setting for his novel 'Shira' (published after his death 1971, but set in the 1930s-40s) and the short story 'Forevermore', published in 1954.
Photographer Yuval Yairi's 'Forevermore: The Hansen Project', currently on show at the Andrea Meislin Gallery in New York (until July 29, 2005) and also opening July 15, 2005 at the Tel Aviv Museum, Israel is an exploration of the very special spaces of the Hansen Hospital. Rather than use an individual image, Yairi works with a digital video camera on a tripod, taking hundreds or thousands of single frames from a single position, each showing a very small area of the scene. These small fragments of space and time - often including changed aspects of the scenre, for example where a figure has moved - are then combined and layered to produce a single colour image.
It is an effective method which gives a unique feeling to the images, a kind of emptiness or absence, combining an accurate representation with a dreamlike quality. You can see reproductions of nine of the images at the Andrea Meislin Gallery site, and around 35 at Yuval Yairi's own web site.
Yuval Yairi was born in 1961 in Tel Aviv. He lives and works in Jerusalem. The Andrea Meislin Gallery opened in New York City's Chelsea area in 2004 and concentrates on contemporary photography by those living and working in Israel. (Written By Peter Marshall).
In the 1860s, Mrs. Von Keffenbrink-Ascherade, a German Moravian (Protestant) woman, was so moved by seeing the leper colony in Jerusalem that she set up a committee, bought land and built the JESUSHILFE, a leper hospital. Twenty years later in 1887 an enlarged building was added by architect Conrad Schick (1822-1901) a German missionary who planned and built many of the city developments of the time. The hospital continued to be staffed by German nursing sisters, even when Britain took over responsibility for Palestine after the First World War. During the 1948 Jewish-Arab war, the hospital became part of Israel, and its running was taken over by the Israeli government.
In 1873, Dr Gerhard Armauer Hansen in Norway discovered the cause of leprosy was a bacterium, and more recently the disease has been known as Hansen's disease and the hospital is the Hansen Hospital for Skin Disease. The Hansen Hospital is still apparently used as a clinic for some treatments of the disease, but is no longer residential but its rooms are largely empty, in many places left exactly as when they were last occupied. As well as the fine buildings, it also has 2 acres of notable gardens, also created in 1887 and taking their inspiration from the bible.
Shmuel Yosef Agnon (b 1988, Ukraine, d 1970), the first Israeli writer to receive the the Nobel Prize for Literature (shared with Jewish poet Nelly Sachs) in 1966, used the hospital as the setting for his novel 'Shira' (published after his death 1971, but set in the 1930s-40s) and the short story 'Forevermore', published in 1954.
Photographer Yuval Yairi's 'Forevermore: The Hansen Project', currently on show at the Andrea Meislin Gallery in New York (until July 29, 2005) and also opening July 15, 2005 at the Tel Aviv Museum, Israel is an exploration of the very special spaces of the Hansen Hospital. Rather than use an individual image, Yairi works with a digital video camera on a tripod, taking hundreds or thousands of single frames from a single position, each showing a very small area of the scene. These small fragments of space and time - often including changed aspects of the scenre, for example where a figure has moved - are then combined and layered to produce a single colour image.
It is an effective method which gives a unique feeling to the images, a kind of emptiness or absence, combining an accurate representation with a dreamlike quality. You can see reproductions of nine of the images at the Andrea Meislin Gallery site, and around 35 at Yuval Yairi's own web site.
Yuval Yairi was born in 1961 in Tel Aviv. He lives and works in Jerusalem. The Andrea Meislin Gallery opened in New York City's Chelsea area in 2004 and concentrates on contemporary photography by those living and working in Israel. (Written By Peter Marshall).