Leon Family Art Gallery at the Simon Family JCC
July 20–August 20
A white billowy hood crowns a woman’s face peeking out of the darkness. Ceremonial robes drape the human form. The composition is swallowed in sorrow. Monochromatic tones transition from deep blacks to reflective whites. Beneath the image’s surface is a narrative the viewer searches for, but may never find. The silence is deafening.
“I look at these silent women, and their silence speaks within me,” says Miri Hyman, the portrait photographer who captured the image.
Hyman was separated from her mother at birth and raised on a kibbutz by nannies. Since then, she has been on a quest for a mother’s glance, touch and that “eye to eye connection that contains a whole word.”
That lost world is what she yearns for and tries to reflect in her photographic portraits of women all over the globe.
Hyman has been involved in women’s groups for many years to, “probe the ways in which feminine company can contain the absence of a present mother.” She observes their environments and uses the camera as a tool to generate a non-verbal connection.
This artist’s gaze is not meant to isolate the subject, but rather to invite the subject to accept her. Hyman does not seek to expose the figures she photographs. Hyman looks through the lens at these women, in hopes of finding the hidden missing pieces within her.
Direct from Israel, Hyman’s portraits will be exhibited in the Leon Family Art Gallery at the Simon Family JCC.
For information about the artist, her work and the exhibition, contact Naty Horev, Simon Family JCC cultural arts specialist, at 757-321-2304.
Gaby Grune