Emanuel Laor   photography

  עמנואל לאור     

Photography was my first love, my first window of opportunity - 
I could look into my own inner world by looking at the outer world, using the camera. And I could express myself, and go out into the world as a hunter would, capturing impressions, moments. I could capture images, ideas, time even could be frozen or elastic through my lens…I could paint my dreams on the emulsion…The ability to extract from the fleeting moment something which might show some part of myself to myself…Even today, 40 years later, the magic of it all still excites me.
 

The photographer's brush and paint is Light.

I remember how the first thing my son was magnetized to
was the light of the light bulb.
But what is light ?
What is it about light which is so attractive for us ?
 

And what is Time ? Is there any way that we can "freeze" time, or some fraction of it ? Can we understand it – time  ? Using long shutter speeds we can see movement as lines in space, and light records itself also thus, as movement in time.
 

And when I observe something, what in me "sees" it ?
Can I see with the heart, as the Little Prince does ?
 

And yes, there is also this :
 

Sometimes, when the camera is in my hand I get a glimpse of the unseen membrane that connects between all things.
Between the cloud and the tree, the sky and the earth, the stars and the man, between people without their knowing it…The camera sometimes allows me to enter and witness this secret realm, a bit like a telescope or a microscope in the hands of the scientist. And this is part of the beauty: To discover and show this pulsating connectivity that exists between everything. Like in a Monet or a Van Gogh picture.
And it's only when my intuitive part is in charge, that I resonate with this unseen tissue, the relational space.
Einstein discovered these laws in the language of mathematics. The impressionists painted it. The composers heard it.
And this twinkle of the unseen, when it appears, like the twinkling of a star  (– a light which reaches us from a distance of time and space, and from another reality), this is what moves me…because in it there is always something essential.
And in it there is Truth, and Beauty.
And an artist, or a scientist, or a teacher or any person –
when he is touched by this fantastic unseen dance which is taking place around and inside us, he brings some of it out into conciousness and embodiment.

And are we not, in a way, similar ?
We appear, then we disappear.
Like the twinkle of a star.
And when we are here we're allowed to feel, to know, to love,
to experience, to learn, to hurt, to understand, to create…
And to touch, perhaps for some precious, fleeting moments –
to touch the light.
Like the song says : "We are mirrors in the sun"…

Emanuel Laor