Haifa Museum Opens Exhibition Exploring Press Photography and Truth in Images

Next week, the Haifa City Museum will launch a new cluster of exhibitions titled "Apparent View, On Photography and Truth," curated by Yifat Ashkenazi. The cluster includes five exhibitions focusing on press photography, primarily featuring photographers from Haifa, both past and present, with ties to the city. Supported by the Brown Foundation for Photography and the Haifa Culture Foundation, the exhibitions will offer audio guides in Hebrew, Arabic, English, and Russian.

The central exhibition delves into the world of press photographers who move toward danger to capture critical moments. It showcases press photographs from the museum’s collection dating back to the 1920s alongside contemporary images mainly from northern Israel. This juxtaposition highlights the photographers’ choices during crises and the power of photographic images to preserve fleeting moments as lasting testimony. The exhibition also raises questions about the nature of truth in photography, especially in an era where everyone can produce images and the line between reality and interpretation blurs. Photographers featured include Avishag Shar-Yashuv, Oren Ziv, Ilia Yefimovich, and others, with professional advisor Lior Al-Chai.

Among the solo exhibitions is "8 Seconds" by artist-photographer Oded Hirsch, who challenges trust in photography by animating still images into short videos that depict events never previously documented in that way. Another solo exhibition, "The Landscape Remembers," by Ronen Zen, interacts with the museum’s historical archive, inserting the artist into 1930s photographs of Druze figures in Haifa through green screen technology.

The exhibitions also feature works by Werner Brown, a press photographer who documented Israel’s history and Haifa’s urban life, and a student project from the University of Haifa that uses large-format analog photography and AI tools to reinterpret archival images.

Yifat Ashkenazi emphasized the exhibitions’ focus on the complex relationship between photography, reality, and trust, especially in today’s digital age where fabricated images challenge traditional notions of truth. Additionally, interactive activities for children will allow them to experience press photography firsthand, including creating newspaper articles and making film reels.

The exhibitions will be held at 11 Ben-Gurion Boulevard, Haifa.