Ari Gersht

     Places That Were Not, is an exhibition of photographs by Ori Gersht at the Angles Gallery in Culver City. According to the press release the exhibition brings together two new bodies of work that deal with memory, history, and landscape, Hide and Seek (2008) and Evaders, (2009.) Though each photograph captures a landscape that is physically present now, the images that Gersht develops evoke a memory of the past or suggest something that might happen in the future.
     The images in Hide and Seek depict hidden swamps and marshes. What I didn’t know at the time was the marshes are on the boarder of Poland and Belarus. I thought they were in Florida or the bayous of Louisiana. According to the press release, these images portray uncharted locations that, historically, had been places of refuge during times of political conflict. Gersht was interested in photographing these areas that do not, or did not, exist on a map and that therefore may be referred to as ‘non-places’ or voids.
     It’s a wonderland of imagery. The artist used his lens to bring the audience into this world of "non places" by getting the viewer to engage his memory to remember places once seen, visited or imagined.