ABOUT THE WORK

In her Betwixt series, Israel seeks to create singular images for contemplation in an age of image-multiplicity. Using a primitive form of X-ray, Israel shines light through the pages of old picture books which have images printed on both sides of the page. The two previously separated images combine, exposing an unseen image world – an unknown space that we all inhabit unconsciously in our world of media images. Israel detaches and houses the appropriated pages in bespoke light boxes (which she calls Shadow Boxes) in order to preserve the moment of image discovery in perpetuity.

In Israel’s Between series she explores the translucent space between images using Victorian glass magic lantern slides. From her collection of magic lantern slides Israel selects and combines multiple slides in order to create three-dimensional, almost holographic images, which she houses and illuminates in her Shadow Boxes.

The Valley series is named after the central gully of a book, the shadowy space of the book’s inner spine, the dark vale separating opposing images. Focussing my camera into the recessive gulf at the centre of a forgotten picture book while tilting the pages together invites the two previously separate images to merge together in uncanny union. The process of photographing the half-open book causes the perspectives of the original images to warp and shift, generating new images of deeply weird, paradoxical spaces. The Valley series evokes the collision of different realities and invites the viewer to consider to the possibility that there are unknown worlds adjacent our own and that, given the right conditions, the vacuum that separates these spaces can be breached.

The After Image series uses the shadow imprints left on the back of the pages of engraved illustrations, formed as the result of the ink soaking into the fabric of the paper over many years partially exposing as ghosts the images hidden on the reverse. 

© Jo Israel 2023