“To Generate a Shemi” was born from Elbling’s research of one of the fathers of Israeli sculpture, Yechiel Shemi, and a specific piece Elbling was especially drawn to.
She recreated the sculpture in her own language using a model she constructed and painted. She then photographed it in a way that, in her words “blurred the boundaries of the work, in terms of medium as well as material, to the point that you can no longer distinguish the sculpture from the background or the photograph from the frame”.
With these actions, Elbling touches on the fundamental principles of photography – its ability to preserve, mediate, and represent and examines how these principles impact our perception of “what was there” through its representation.
