Purim special - Woman custome!

It's kind of strange that although one of my favorite activities in daily life is wearing customs and personas, Purim, the Jewish custom holiday, makes me feel helpless and confused. In fact, I almost never manage to find a new custom for this day and year after year, I find myself wearing the most exotic and challenging disguise of all: that is, the disguise of A Woman.

If you happen to be "a natural woman" as in the song of Aretha Franklin, this may sound kind of ridiculous to you, but as for me, I don't even believe you exist. "A woman is not born: she is made", said Simone de Beauvoir and as you can see in the following images, without the right gestures and accessories, you will be in the danger of passing as an unidentified creature and even worse: as your Self!

So my advice to you, dear sisters, for Purim (and for life), is: whether you choose to be a clown, a policewoman, a super-heroine or an Oreo Cookie: Show some skin! Keep it sexy! Don't make them forget what you are!

Happy Purim, you naughty girls you... 

Nobody's Coming 5, C-print, 80*60 cm, 2013

Nobody's Coming 5-aC-print, 80*60 cm, 2013

Forensics

These images were created a few months before I became the photographer of Israel's National Institute of Forensic Medicine. Unlike most types of photography, from journalistic to fashion to Instagram, forensic photography's sole aim is to document and reveal the truth, regardless of aesthetic, personal or political considerations. In forensics, there is no place for self expression nor for artistic creativity. The forensic photographer working in the morgue is like an extension of the doctor, and has to folllow her or his instructions with precision and atention, using the camera as a scientific, rather than an artistic tool.

I feel very lucky to be a forensic photographer. This kind of work has provided me with the oportunity to learn anatomy, medicine, criminology, anthropology, pathology, osteology... and has given me the rare chance to face directly, on a daily basis, the deepest fears of human kind. Somehow, the intensive contact with death has increased even more my love for life.

But of course, aestheticly, speaking, staged death can be marvelous. And it doesn't smell.

  

Rita and Jonathan, 2013

Jonathan and Rita, 2013