The journey underlying the series Strangely Familiar extends across four countries: Ukraine, England, Israel, and Russia. Michal Chelbin moves between the various loci, her camera seeking mundane human stories ranging from the familiar and ordinary to the different and odd. The color and black-and-white photographs capture slices of life that confront the viewer directly, reflecting universal themes, such as family, puberty, belonging, and alienation.
The series is comprised of photographs of groups, couples, and individuals – all dressed in their representative costumes or, alternatively, in festive attire prepared in advance for the special meeting with the artist. The figures are removed from their natural setting. They are not photographed on stage or during training, but rather depicted at home, on the street or in a park. Their new, informal positioning generates a sense of privacy and intimacy with the photographed subjects, but at the same time elicits a disconcerting sense of alienation and mystery. Chelbin directs meticulous, ordered compositions that contain tension and drama, even if the figures are static and indrawn. Usually the figures of young boys and girls on the verge of adolescence, they thus introduce a discrepancy between the formal, representative costumes on the one hand, the body’s fragility and the multiple intricacies embodied by adolescence, on the other.
Chelbin attempts to communicate with her subjects, to reflect their situation, but at the same time strives for obscurity and estrangement. “For me, the image is just the tip of the iceberg; it’s the gate to a story waiting to be told, which I try to depict in an appealing yet troubling way. This story is about a life full of contradictions on the battle ground between fantasy and reality.” The twilight zone emerging from the photographs places the viewer between a sense of identification and a sense of puzzlement; as indicated by the oxymoronic title of the series – it is all “strangely familiar.”
Michal Chelbin (1974) was born in Haifa. Lives and works in Israel and New York.
Less Reading...
