- Sea of dreams. Liliana Gelman photographs the sea
I would photograph an idea rather than an object, and a dream rather than an idea
Man Ray
In spite of thousands of years of experience we still do not have complete control of
our senses. Dreams, for example, are essentially based on what we see and on what
we call optical illusions, but because we are unable to capture them by means of the camera, they remain absolutely beyond the control humankind is supposed to exert
over its environment.
Liliana Gelman tries to walk the line that divides reality from dream. She captures scenes with this precise instrument that does not distort – the camera, and then transfers them to a dream territory by means of another mechanical agent – the computer.
Liliana Gelman describes herself as a mere spectator, stirred by the revelation of the vastness of the sea. In most of her blue photographs, she contemplates the sea from a great distance, thus calling attention to the moment of contact between the similar but so different elements of sea and sky. In this series, “Dreams”, she turns them both into a stage on which the dream is intended to be enacted. When the ‘actors’ appear, these identifiable objects are transmuted into airy creatures from another world. In the “Water” series, the artist deals with the contact between earth and water, and here she prefers a closer scrutiny that reveals the nature of the materials as a reflection of a visual game between the objects themselves, and between themselves and the light.
In the “Ships” series, she chooses to pinpoint nature itself, in order to allow concentration on and identification with the season, with a specific time of day, or with the weather.
The series “Ships in the Night” presents another kind of dream. The ships look like flames floating in space, perhaps illuminated, or burning, bringing to mind adventure stories about sea battles, storms, pirate raids, or even the Egyptian death ships ferrying their human cargo to eternity.
"Sea of Dreams"
The National Maritime Museum, Haifa, Israel
Avraham Eilat, exhibition curator
Haifa, November 2005
