Ghosts of the future

Photographs of children today, shot mainly by parents equipped with constantly-

available digital accessories, supply immense amounts of visual material. The single
photograph – souvenir from the first day of school – does not exist anymore, but
rather an endless stock of photos. I search through the abundance of children’s
photos: playing, moving, alone or in groups, trying to capture body gestures which
seem primary: gestures of impulses and instincts which motivate us at any age,
dancing, violence, aggression, curiosity.

I imagine them in the difficult landscapes that await them, the same landscapes I
photograph on the road under the heavy weight of tradition. It is a hard thing to
imagine, so I looked for a way to produce these ghost-visions in order to distance
them from me, from here, from now and from you, who sees the works. Inspired by
the children’s photos, I drew with charcoal on paper and scanned the drawings. The
scan turned the charcoal grains into patches and lines, and the paper texture into
woven fabrics. I then hybridized the photos and the drawing using a digital pen, thus
creating a new image with equal traces of drawing and photography. The images
were printed on transparent Perspex to create more depth, a few more millimeters
of distance.

Ora Ruven, 2012