As I sit in the studio of photographer Roi Kuper, he reads aloud from "It's the Dream," a poem by Norwegian poet Olav H. Hauge: "It's the dream we carry/that something wondrous will happen... that one morning we'll quietly drift/into a harbor we didn't know was there."
From the series 'No Escape from the Past.' 'Sitting in front of the horizon of the sea is like waiting for hope - everything is possible.
Photo: Roi Kuper
"His poem says what I think photography and art should do," explains Kuper, sitting at his desk in his modest but impeccable studio on Sderot Har Zion in South Tel Aviv.
Kuper reads a lot, and especially poetry. For many years he was engrossed in 20th-century German writers - Brecht, Frisch, Grass - but more recently he has moved on to Scandinavians, among them Hauge and the Finnish poet Sirka Turka. It isn't surprising that Kuper, a heavy set man who exudes an internal heaviness, is drawn to poets like Hauge, who spent most of his life isolated in his hometown of Ulvik. Though Kuper grew up in Ashdod, a far cry from Hauge's hometown, his serial landscapes are often stark, even cold, desolate photos that are almost always without people.
He is drawn to open, empty spaces - especially the sea - where, as he says, "everything is possible." He began taking photos in the 1980s, quiet, meditative landscapes that reveal what has always been there, but which most of the time we fail to notice. Placing almost identical photographs side by side, Kuper shifts our attention to the subtle variations between them and teaches us to see drama where we least expect it.
"You cannot step into the same river twice," Heraclitus said. The phrase was the inspiration behind Kuper's series "Like Stars in the Water" (2005), but serves as the photographer's overall guiding philosophy. No two landscapes are exactly alike, and Kuper uses his camera to prove this time and again. "It is not the landscape that interests me, but the small movements between them," he says. "It matters to me where I take the picture. I have a connection, maybe even a feeling for that place. It moves me, but it's only a starting point."
Kuper shows me a group of four almost identical photographs of the sea that were part of his series "No Escape from the Past" (2002). Subtle variations in the waves take center stage and alter the way we are accustomed to looking at and thinking about landscapes. Meaning is revealed, just as the poem suggests, by drifting into "the harbor" - or in this case by drifting back and forth between the photos like a pendulum. The movement is slow, and one needs time to get there.
Kuper is drawn to open, empty spaces - especially the sea - where, as he says, 'everything is possible.'
Photo: Michal Lando
Kuper, 52, has a quiet air about him. He is soft-spoken and doesn't seem to be in a rush to go anywhere. It has been eight months since he touched his camera - the first time he has taken a break since he began photographing more than 25 years ago. For almost as long Kuper has been teaching photography and has exhibited widely both here and abroad. His work appears in several museums, including the Tate Modern, the Israel Museum and the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, as well as many private collections.
Kuper is comfortable, even content with silence, but something lurks behind his calm exterior. The same can be said of his photographs - they are quiet but unnerving. Kuper's use of repetition is extreme, and his photos tend to arouse extreme reactions.
He recalls an exhibition of his work at Tel Aviv's Noga Gallery of Contemporary Art in 2007, the year he completed his ambitious trilogy "To Eat of the Leviathan Flesh" (2008). The title comes from a phrase in the Gemara which says that the righteous will enter paradise and "eat from the flesh of the Leviathan." All three parts - Atlantis, The White Cliffs of Dover and To Those Who Were Supposed to Be With Us - touch on human aspiration, the need to believe "that something good will happen." During the exhibition, the stark white room of the Noga Gallery was covered wall to wall with 23 almost identical photos of the ocean off the coast of south Portugal that make up "Atlantis," named after the legendary island that sank. "I wanted it to be very white, and very clean, nothing disturbing."
Some people entered the gallery, took one look and walked out, while others sat down in the middle of the floor and stayed for hours, Kuper recalls. "This is Atlantis - to live in a room like this," he says. "To wake up every morning in that room and notice something different, is heaven for me."
What interests Kuper, some critics have called "boring." That doesn't bother him. For Kuper "boredom" is not a bad thing. Quite the opposite, he tries to bore the viewer. The tactic is similar to hypnosis, he explains - "to make the viewer fall asleep and then to open him to a different experience."
Early in the interview, Kuper suggests to me that spending a whole hour in silence would likely be more interesting than having a conversation, "but we have developed a way of communicating through images and words." In the two hours I spend with him, there are long moments of silence and Kuper takes to them well - silence interests him, and his photos are evidence of this.
Recently a man requested to visit Kuper's studio. He was interested in a photograph from his 2002 series "No Escape from the Past" that was hanging on the wall. The man came in and sat in front of the 126 cm. x 126 cm. color print of a woman closing her eyes without saying a word, Kuper recalls. After an hour in silence the man got up, bought the photo and left.
"When you look at the woman for a long time, there is something disturbing," says Kuper.
During the 2002 exhibit of "No Escape from the Past," the photograph of the woman with her eyes closed, one of the few portraits Kuper has taken, was hung opposite images of the sea. The placement wasn't accidental. Starting from the age of six Kuper used to sit in front of the sea for "hours, days, years" at a time watching and waiting.
"Sitting in front of the horizon of the sea is like waiting for hope - everything is possible," says Kuper. "The woman is closing her eyes to the past and to hope, but you can't escape from either."
