The Making of The Fright, 2024

Was part of the dual exhibiton See Level with Yaacov Chefetz, curated by Maruisz Soltysik
OPCJA Gallery, Krakow


The Making of The Fright is a reenactment of the 1931 photograph “The Fright” that was taken by the polish photographer Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz. This photograph is a self portrait of Witkiewicz, which reveals  a theatrical intervention in photography during wartime.
Fear, Alarm, Panic, Terror, Horror, Phobia; All those words carrying with them the most important yet most absurd events in history.
War is one of the most ancient ways of communicating, getting too close and too far,through physical actions, then ideas. The result is a brutal new reality.
The Making of The Fright imitates and replicates Witkiewicz’s gaze, seeking answers, in the current wartime.This fright gesture that Witkiewicz chooses to put on a pedestal makes theater into photography. I saw an opportunity to continue the cycle of transformations and to make photography turn into painting, and eventually into an object - a curtain.
The curtain carries the image of horror.By making the horror a threshold it forces one to enter a space loaded with the idea of war.Unlike the usual bamboo curtains that are designed to create a pleasant entrance to a domestic space, this one designed to recreate evidence of war that welcomes you to enter the space.


The portrait was taken by photographer Matan Meirson and converted to an airbrush painting produced in a factory in Hanoi, Vietnam.