Ori Gersht
Ori Gersht (b. 1967, Tel Aviv; lives and works in London, UK) holds an MFA in photography from the Royal College of Art in London and a BA in Photography, Film, and Video from the University of Westminster. He is a professor at the University for the Creative Arts in Rochester, Kent, England.
Gersht is a photographer and video artist whose work poetically explores the relationships between history, memory, and landscape. Through metaphor, he illuminates the challenges of visually representing conflict and the complexities of violent histories.
His themes encompass Dutch still life painting, romantic landscapes, and the escape routes from Nazi-occupied territory in the Pyrenees. Gersht's imagery is strikingly beautiful, drawing viewers in before confronting them with darker, more complex themes, creating a compelling tension between beauty and violence. This includes explorations of his own family's experiences during the Holocaust, a series of post-conflict landscapes in Bosnia, and a celebrated trilogy of slow-motion films where traditional still lifes explode on screen. Gersht approaches these topics not only through his choice of imagery but also by pushing the technical limits of photography, questioning its claim to truth. He is particularly known for his work with slow-motion capture, creating images and videos that depict fruits, flowers, and other materials fracturing upon impact from high-velocity gunfire.
Gersht’s works have been exhibited in numerous major institutions, including the Guggenheim in New York, the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, D.C., the Bass Museum of Art in Miami, the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, and the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, among many others. Images courtesy of Ori Gersht Studio
