Ori Gersht Format: Paperback

Fallen trees. Verdant landscapes. Lofty mountains overlooking deep rolling valleys. The stunning natural beauty of the subjects of Israeli-born, London-based Ori Gersht’s photography leaves viewers breathless. But the natural splendor belies the significance of these locations as the sites of historical events we can no longer plainly see.
           
In Ori Gersht: Force of Natures—Film and Photography, the evolution of the artist’s basic process is explored in a series of powerfully expressive full-color photographs. Searching for traces of the past, Gersht translates the process of remembering into images. The majestic peaks of the Pyrenees, for instance, are revealed in the photographer’s thoughtful focus as the site of a desperate flight from Nazi-occupied France. Throughout his works, Gersht unfolds a complex metaphor for the impenetrable relationship between the past and present, death and life.
           
Gersht’s works have been the subject of major solo exhibitions in the United States, at places such as the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the Columbus Museum of Art; the Santa Barbara Museum of Art; and the Hirschhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC; as well as many internationally acclaimed museums. Collecting Gersht’s works from 1999 to the present, this book reveals the artist’s remarkable career.

Andrea Firmenich is an art historian and general manager of the Altana Kulturstiftung, an arts education organization based in Frankfurt.

Johannes Janssen is director of the Museum Sinclair-Haus in Bad Homburg, Germany.