Reich Benyamin #Photographe
I was raised in a Jewish Hassidic family, with eleven children, and attended religious schools and yeshivahs. My father served as a rabbi in ultra-orthodox congregations in Israel and abroad. As a teenager, I was attracted to art. I left the orthodox way of life and moved to the artistic world.
Exposition Friday Bath - Benyamin Reich Exposition Home Less Home - Benyamin Reich Exposition Forsaken Me? - Benyamin Reich Exposition Der dritte tempel - Benyamin Reich Modifier l'image
'Friday Bath', 2008, video slide show, 4-52 min. I video di Benjamin Reich affrontano il tema del profondo sentimento di amicizia, talvolta omosessualità, tra gli adolescenti israeliani nei clan ultra ortodossi. Il suo recente lavoro video 'Friday Bath', è stato girato a Lifta, in occasione del Bagno, un momento reputato sacro dalla cultura ortodossa. Ci sono molte sorgenti naturali intorno Gerusalemme, utilizzate per scopi religiosi. Qusti luoghi nascondono qualcosa di magico, un'atmosfera quasi pagana. Nella cultura ortodossa ogni azione, ogni singolo gesto dell'uomo deve essere dedicato a Dio. Nel lavoro di Ben Reich questo senso di intimia e profonda amicizia è un ulteriore dono a Dio. 'Immersion... is a commandment which requires immersing the entire body under water. The immersed body has to b...
HomeLessHome will aspire to investigate the relationship between the private home and the state. It will study the formal and functional similarity between the two spaces which enables the definition of both as "home" (the national home), and the difference between them, which traditionally places the former in the private (or natural) sphere and the latter in the political sphere. The difference will be explored in light of the traditional placement (since Aristotle) of the home as the "other" of the political, containing what has been removed from it, and thus defining the contours of the political, which it may not trespass. The home is seen as something "natural", as a space dominated by needs that are of no interest to the designed public space. Its interior is identified as a private,...
Binyamin Reich's exhibition is the fruit of his wanderings through the realms of his childhood in the Mea Shearim neighborhood of Jerusalem. It displays a collection of documentary photographs, childhood photographs, family photographs, and anonymous photographs. With a sense of yearning, the adult Reich returns as a suitor to these regions, documenting this world of others with his camera. Childhood becomes the object of desire and its photographic representation is testimony to possible ideal perfection. The element of strangeness is a thread woven through the photographs; it is possible to identify the sense of otherness coming to the surface along with the expressed effort to belong. Placing the childhood photographs alongside the documentary photographs confronts the personal and the collective experience. The past ...
Benyamin Reich studied at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris and the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design in Jerusalem. He was raised within a Jewish ultra-orthodox family and attended religious schools and yeshivas until he left home at an early age to find his way in the secular world. The prophet Isaiah described the Third Temple as a source of divine inspiration and truth for all humanity. Reich's exhibition at RISE Berlin entitled 'The Third Temple' is autobiographical, it expresses a desire to unify the spiritual and secular elements of his life. In the installation the viewer is given a unique and privileged view into Reich's extraordinary world, a world that contrasts the sensuous flesh and physical beauty of the secular world with the strict formality of orthodox religion, Reich somehow finds spirituality and erot...