Leora Cheshin photographs Tel Aviv street art

The cracked and crumbling walls, weather-beaten doors and windswept alleyways in Tel Aviv’s varied neighborhoods have become the main canvas for an eclectic group of mostly immigrant artists. Working individually and in crews with stencils, spray paint, markers and paste-ups, they have transformed the landscape of their adopted city.

In “Befriend Your Demon” celebrated photographer Leora Cheshin captures these images with a mastery of composition and balance. She creates an ambiance that exudes a sense of impending catastrophe with undercurrents of death, dislocation and decay. Lurking monsters and contorted cryptic figures portend a frightening, uncertain future. Just about everything is askew and appears to be off-balance. Anxiety is ever-present as the strong prey upon the weak. The boundaries between man and animal are increasingly blurred. There is fear of imminent war, looming violence and religious coercion as internal and external inequalities and tensions increase. There is a cry to befriend your demon, to make peace with the forces which furtively lurk behind the fragile walls.

And yet for all the despair, there is beauty, life and wit in this world of contradictions. Hope mixes with sore doubt. Amidst the dusty decay, a musician plays his violin - a bottle of water perched beside him. A dark human comedy emerges with characters engrossed in their fictitious world. With his face obscured by a gas-mask, a young boy entertains himself with his yo-yo. Growing up in an ambience of guns and violence, children continue to play amidst the threat of missiles. One child rides a rocket. Prowling predators bottle salvation to prey upon the praying pious. And a pathetic, vulnerable figure with a gun scope’s cross hairs on his forehead stares from a bleak warren of corrugated tin buildings – while a gleaming skyscraper looms in the background.

Cheshin’s poignantly haunting photographs in “Befriend Your Demon” rescue these ephemeral images from oblivion. With passion, irony and a sensitive eye, Cheshin
skillfully records the cacophonous echoes of found art on these crumbling walls as she transmutes them into artworks charged with visual and psychological intrigue.

Lois Stavsky, curator New York, 2009

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