I was born in 1970 in Bucharest, immigrated in 1985 to Israel. Before, during and after my graduation from the Art Academy’s photography department in Jerusalem I worked for many different European book publishers, magazines and newspapers, while a couple of my projects were exhibited world-wide.
In time, in my personal work, I saw that traces of my own history (having lost the unquestioned sense of “home”, more than anything else) affected me, had driven me a lot more than any “urge to document the Israeli reality”.
On a less personal note: I think that WW2’s impact upon Israel’s reality is a lot stronger than any of its current leaders’, citizens’ or neighbors’ acts.
Thus, my need to stick to unstaged (Israeli) street photography is not self-understood, as what I do while wandering its streets is capturing images depicting the essence of my inner split world, rather than “dealing with local events”. Using characters whom I do not know, who happen to accurately overlap for a split second with scenes, dominant feelings, projected onto my inner silver screen, is what I do.
Dinu Mendrea
