Yuval Yairi
2006
Agnon's Libary
[Palaces of Memory]

Digital composite
46.4 x 70 in
 
Provided by the artist - Yuval Yairi
Courtesy of Andrea Meislin Gallery, NY
 
Agnon's Library is made of 2,100 frames taken during 2 days. This room was Agnon's very private "temple", it contains over 8,000 books, mostly on Jewish subjects.
 
) (Today, Agnon's house serves as a small museum, turned into a public space). The image was taken shortly before the room's entire content was tagged, disassembled and packed in boxes, sent to storage while the house goes through renovation and some of the books to restoration. This process resembles the photographic technique in which the room is being photographed in small parts, stored in (digital) memory and then rebuilt in an almost precise way, but not exactly. There is a gap between the stage of memorizing (observing and documenting the space), and the stage of recollecting (the time when the photographs are reconstructed). I relate to these memory-gaps in my works, traces of the memorizing-remembering process are embedded in them.
 
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