It’s all in the mind – and the eye

Retired Police Supt. Yana Gerber is taking erotic photographs of trees that look like naked men and women.

By CARL HOFFMAN
yana gerber_521 (photo credit: Courtesy)
yana gerber_521
(photo credit: Courtesy)
Last May, Yana Gerber took early retirement at age 54 and left her job after many years of faithful service. Who cares? You will, when you read about the job she retired from, and what she is doing now.
For 27 years, Police Supt. Yana Gerber examined and identified forged and falsified documents for the Israel Police in its Forensic Sciences Laboratory in Jerusalem. Now she is taking erotic photographs of trees that look like naked men and women.
Gerber’s unusual story begins in Moscow in 1973, when her brother emigrated to Israel.
“I was in high school,” she recalls. “It was a disaster for me. I was now the object of a lot of anti-Semitism. I was thrown out of the Komsomol, the Soviet youth organization. Our telephone was tapped. It was really terrible.
“I tried to enter the university. They said my marks weren’t good enough to study at a Russian university, and that I should learn one more year to be better prepared. I told them that I hoped that in one more year I would no longer be in the Soviet Union.”
Gerber and her parents wanted to emigrate to Israel, but entertained little hope of their being allowed to leave the Soviet Union.
“My father worked as a chief engineer in a very secret factory for the army. We were certain that they would never give us permission to leave,” she says. “But somehow – they had no logic – they let us leave. I came to Israel with my parents, and the day we arrived was the happiest day of my life. From that moment I felt immediately that this place is my home.”
Gerber soon married a friend from Moscow, who arrived in Israel shortly after she did. She entered Tel Aviv University and studied archeology and ancient Greek. After graduation, she began working at the Eretz Israel Museum in Ramat Aviv.
Although she had found the study of archeology fascinating, working with it at the museum was another matter.
“I felt that it was rather boring, and I couldn’t see myself working in museums all my life. So I changed my career. I had always wanted to train dogs, but my mother would never let me have one at home. So, when I was on my own, I picked up two dogs from the street – since then I have always had a dog or two at home – and I studied dog obedience training and worked at that for several years.”
One of the many dogs she trained belonged to a policeman.
“One day, he told me that a certain police department had been looking for a suitable person for more than three years. The policeman felt that I might be a good candidate for the job, which turned out to be detecting forged documents.
“I’ve always had an open mind, so I said, ‘Why not?’ and went to the Forensic Sciences Laboratory in Jerusalem. They explained the job to me, and it sounded fascinating. So I said ‘Why not?’ and took the job.”
Did she have any prior experience in detecting forgeries?
“Nobody has any prior experience. Here in Israel, as in most countries, you don’t learn this at a university. You learn it from experience, from sitting with experts for sometimes five years. You learn the profession, and only after five years is your expertise trusted enough for you to be able to make professional judgments and testify in court.”
Gerber was specifically an expert in forged handwriting, working mostly in Russian, East European languages and Hebrew. She came to her conclusions by checking as many samples of the genuine handwriting she could get against the suspicious samples and analyzing the writing according to a wide range of different points of reference – fluency, slope, spacing, absolute and relative size of the letters, the structure of the letters, and much more.
“Each analysis was like a doctoral dissertation,” she says.
At the end of each analysis, she was expected to produce a detailed report, noting her level of certainty.
“The highest degree of my expert certainty was like a fingerprint. The court didn’t require any other corroborating evidence.”
Gerber dealt with cases from the worlds of politics, espionage and, of course, crime. Many of these were big, high-profile cases that involved thousands of documents and years of court appearances and testimony.
“And many convictions,” she says. Among these she were the espionage cases of Nahum Manbar and Lt.-Col.
Omar al-Hayab, the theft case of minister Avraham Hirchson; and the Trade Bank embezzlement case.
Although Gerber was the only expert in Israel on East European handwriting, she was far from being the only woman.
“There are more women than men in this profession,” she says. Asked why, she replies, “You need patience, unlimited patience. You need a very special kind of eye, along with a special creativity. You also must never be too sure of yourself, because that is very dangerous.
“You also need to know how to deal with testifying in court, keeping composed during cross-examinations. I think that women possess these qualities more than men.”
GERBER ACKNOWLEDGES that detecting forged handwriting is not an exact science, even although it is used as reliable evidence by courts around the world. Asked whether courts should continue to use handwriting analysis as evidence, Gerber says, “Yes – but remember that in every profession there are charlatans.”
Another problem is that the profession of handwriting analysis for forgery detection is often confused with “graphology,” the controversial use of handwriting analysis to create a psychological profile of the writer. Although widely used in Israel, particularly by companies deciding whether or not to hire certain job applicants, graphology is considered by many to be at best a pseudoscience, and at worst nothing more than a parlor game.
“In my opinion, graphology is indeed a profession,” Gerber says. “There is a lot to it, in theory. Our minds, motor skills and hands are connected, and that connection is unique to each person.
“The problem is that 90 percent of graphologists are charlatans. They maybe read one book and went once a week for three months to some course. There is no qualifying examination, no professional organization.
Anyone can render an opinion, and the result is just terrible.
“Years ago, when we went to the courts to testify, the ‘handwriting experts’ testifying for the defense were usually graphologists. They claimed expertise in things they knew absolutely nothing about. After a while, graphology was no longer accepted in courts as evidence.
“Nowadays, judges understand the difference between the two professions,” she says.
Asked whether the difference is anything like that between the science of astronomy and the non-science of astrology, she answers, “Exactly.”
Although Gerber was able to find the odd moment from time to time to dabble in painting and play the saxophone, her police superintendent job at the forensic sciences lab kept her busy – eventually, much busier than she wanted to be.
“I tried to retire during my last years, but because I am the only expert in quite a big field, they would not accept my retirement,” she recalls. Her superiors compromised enough, however, to allow Gerber to take a three-year leave of absence, to accompany her physicist husband to Europe for post-doctoral research.
“I was gone for three years, and no one did any of the work during that time. It was all waiting for me when I returned. Finally, in May of this year, I retired.”
GERBER DISCOVERED her artistic calling during her three-year vacation in Europe. She says: “I always took photographs, but it was like most everyone else – pictures of children, nature.
“But starting three years ago, when I was on leave in Europe, I took some very special pictures in two places. One was Barcelona, where I witnessed the most amazing sunrise I ever saw. I stood on the balcony of a hotel and took the pictures.
“The second series was at a frozen lake in France. I showed some of the pictures to friends, who told me they were amazing and that I had to do something with photography. They gave me the push.”
While her friends may have given her the push, it was water, of all things, that appears to have provided the budding photographer with her artistic vision. With notable originality, Gerber began to take pictures with very different, creative perspectives – not direct views of the subject, but rather reflections of the subject as seen in nearby puddles of water. Some of the photographs almost seem to have been shot through raindrops.
While many of the photos are of scenes in nature – a gray forest on a dark winter’s day, or a rainy lake in the middle of nowhere – some of Gerber’s most interesting pictures feature urban imagery, like people walking through the rain under dripping umbrellas.
Her water-reflected images of buildings, streetlamps and gabled rooftops remind the viewer of Alfred Stieglitz’s iconic rainy photograph of the Savoy Hotel.
Gerber’s photos quickly began to attract attention. She had more than 10 solo exhibitions in Israel during her three-year leave and participated in several group exhibitions in France, China and the US. She also sold what she describes as “a remarkable amount” of her work.
Self-taught in photography, Gerber takes her pictures with nothing more complicated than a simple Canon Powershot G9 digital camera, invariably set on “automatic.” This has led, she says, to a substantial amount of ribbing from her husband.
“He has a great sense of humor,” says Gerber. “Whenever I have an exhibition, he comes to the opening bringing me the Canon G9’s owner’s manual, so I will learn how to use the camera.”
Gerber is not technically naïve, however. She does make use of oil paint retouching to develop the atmosphere of some of her pictures, Photoshop to enhance certain effects, and printing on canvas to provide texture and depth. The results of these techniques are photographs that look like impressionist paintings.
Gerber’s latest series of photographs, recently exhibited at the Artists House in Tel Aviv, is somewhat of a departure from those she has previously produced. She says, “I like the photography of Helmut Newton – very tall, naked women. It is very impressive. When I went with my dog to the park one day, I suddenly saw the same kinds of figures in the trees. The trees looked like the figures in the paintings of Helmut Newton.
“I took a few pictures and put them near pictures of Newton’s paintings. The similarities were fascinating.”
As photographed by Gerber, the similarities involve such objects as branches that look like human thighs, knots of wood that resemble female breasts, and other arboreal features that look unmistakably like buttocks and genital organs, both male and female.
“Most of the trees are from Yarkon Park in Tel Aviv. Each tree is seen exactly as I found it,” she says. Gerber does admit to cleaning up a bit around the tree before taking its picture, and then, of course, printing it upside down.
“I call this series of photographs ‘The Grove,’ because of the connotations of ancient religions, of ancient peoples’ connection to trees.
In ancient Celtic, Germanic, Russian cultures, all cultures, trees were spirits. Sometimes they were gods. Religious ceremonies took place in the grove.
“When I took more and more pictures of trees, I began to feel like ancient man. I started to feel the magic and the purity of the trees. Some people look at these photographs and say it is pornography. But it’s all in our minds. These are trees. All the connotations are in our minds.
“I put the tree images against a white background, because I want to invite the viewer to my grove, into a place that is pure and innocent.”
So what lies ahead for ex-police superintendent and current photographer Yana Gerber?
She says, “I want to work, to paint, play the saxophone, travel a lot and enjoy life. I’ve earned it.”
Yana’s Diary, an appealing idiosyncratic new book of Yana Gerber’s photography, musings and artistic philosophy, is available directly from the artist. Tel. 054-477-9514.

Yana Gerber’s next exhibition will open at the Nora Gallery in Jerusalem on January 12, 2010.