Death comes even to stones and names
Light installation by Shiran Yitzhari

​

The installation follows the architectural outline of a structure that no longer exists: the Khoury House in Haifa. Built at the beginning of the 20th century by Salim Khoury, the house was where his family lived until it was sold and later rented to the Palestine Railways. During the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, the building was damaged by fire and eventually demolished. In its place, a new building was erected, known today as the Beit HaNevi’im (The Tower).

Using old photographs of the original building, Yitzhari created a projection of the silhouette of the Khoury House, which is cast onto another building—the Tower. The silhouette is projected onto a plaster wall decorated with concave elements reminiscent of the curved windows of the original structure. This projection is itself surrounded by another projection of a larger silhouette, that of the Beit HaNevi’im Tower.

Built in the 1980s as a modern, luxurious office tower, the building today stands almost empty, with most of its floors unoccupied. It has slowly been abandoned in favor of newer buildings constructed throughout the city.

Through the projection on the walls, Yitzhari seeks to examine the photographic mechanism and decipher it through light. The work operates on several sculptural levels. First, the creation of arched shapes in the plaster wall that resemble windows constitutes a kind of negative sculptural mold—one into which materials can be poured in order to produce a sculptural form. This process is comparable to the concept of the negative in analogue photography: in order to produce a photograph, a negative—the film itself—must be used, on which the image is obtained in colors opposite to reality. Developing the film and projecting it onto photographic paper restores the original colors to life, just as casting material into a mold produces the “original” sculpture as an object that occupies a real place in the world.

Yitzhari’s photographic action is therefore almost metaphorical. Since the two buildings are documented and recognizable, there is no need for a real camera or for additional documentation in order to become familiar with their forms. Moreover, while photography freezes a particular moment in time, Yitzhari captures several layers of time and process within her work. The two combined projections point to two different moments in time that occur in a linear sequence, one after the other.

At the same time, the screening offers the possibility of seeing the projections as a simultaneous existence of history and the present. Because the projected images appear intertwined at any given moment, the work preserves collective memory while also revealing the site’s current existence.

“Death comes even to names and stones.”
— Decimus Magnus Ausonius, Epitaphia, 31, De Nomine Cuiusdam Marmore in Sculpto Lucii
(London, 1919–1921, Vol. 1, p. 159)