“This haunting first monograph by Israeli-born photographer, Assaf Pocker, Scar Tissue reinvents photographic portraiture as a medium for communicating the deepest and darkest of human emotions,” as described by Nazraeli Press. Pocker, who studied Photography and Art at Jerusalem’s Bezalel Academy of Art and Design, worked as a successful photojournalist in Israel throughout the 1980’s before moving to America.
I spoke with Assaf recently about his work in Scar Tissue: “This project is about how we perceive other people and how we are prejudice against other people. It’s about a voice for people who have pain and the outcome of the pain. I worked on this project for almost 7 years, I did not know how long it would take, I just knew I had to do it probably since I started studying photography.”
“In Israel, I was a photojournalist gathering stories that happened, could be celebrities or could be at refugee camps. I was sent to cover high profile people, but I felt like I was wasting my time. I preferred going to photograph people that nobody talks about, getting into their lives. I left a very promising career to come to America. I already had this project in my head. In the beginning a session would last all day, maybe 5 days, it was a long period of intimacy drawn into their stories; I would leave exhausted. I had to learn to pace myself. Eighty percent of the photographs in the book are from the last three years.”
“I’m beginning slowly on a new project in color that has to do with drag queens, documenting and getting into their lives.”
Elizabeth Avedon
