Lior Tamim​

By the end of 2013 there will be 1.4 billion smart phones in the world. This means that every 1:5 persons will have a phone equipped with a camera and instagram, making a fifth of the world’s population potential photographers. The influx of photographers brings me to question my place as a “professional” photographer. I feel more and more discouraged from using conventional photography equipment whenever I want to capture an image or produce a photographic documentation.

 

In my work there is no clear distinction between the roles of photographer and subject. My need to immerse myself into the situation depicted relays to my interest in acting, in assuming a character. I trust in improvisation. When faced with a new subject, or a new place, I usually avoid research (which tends to complicate the situation) and try to instead become a new character and enter new places with minimum preconception. Using as equipment, or “tools” what I find in this new place will be to take this a step further. My role and my identity in this project will be designed specifically for the area I am working in.
 
Towanda, PA. is a small town changed forever by a recently booming local industry of fracking for natural gas. Towanda sits on the Marcellus Shale, a piece of soil naturally rich in gas. When fracking began there a few years ago the water in Towanda were contaminated with gas. Some people had their tap water go aflame, or their wells explode. Others became sick. In Towanda, a place that has been victimized by circumstance, I chose to tell a story of a victim. Using a DIY camera that is shot to produce an image represents the perspective of a victim, the physical pain and its impact. The story of Towanda draws associations to drilling, leaving holes in the ground, wounding it. Creating images that are the product of shooting, that are pierced by the violence inflicted on them, relates to the place.

 

I chose to focus my exploration on the hunters of Towanda. To create images, I built black carton camera obscure with 4x5 sheets inside and directed my subject to shoot at the camera. In Towanda I create a new form of visual product by incorporating the use of ready made images, paintings, performance art, photographed images, video, sound and visual studies of local objects.

 

The Towanda project is the first part executed in my US project, which I began researching in 2011, when I first arrived. I aim to “build” a portrait of a place, The USA, by selective role-playing and documentation of unique American characters that together could amount to a portrait of American society. My research has taken me across the US three times now, and to almost every state. In wandering and immersing myself in a new place I become part of the American portrait.