Porat – Hunting In Time

Hunting in Time is an artist book by Ronit Porat which draws from a trilogy of exhibitions about a mysterious crime committed in Berlin at the turn of the century. The book’s hard cover with round corners refers to a notebook. In her work, Porat creates archives, she tells historical stories with collage, altering and re-contextualizing images. She is most interested in the Weimar time period in Berlin, Germany, a time period in which gender roles became more fluid, and a period that we currently view with the shadow of its future cast over it. Animals, particularly birds, are a recurring motif, echoing the shapes of the human body and adding a layer of mystery. In creating distance between the viewer and the characters, Porat respects the multiple viewpoints within each story, and the layers of a story that is told several times over. Mindful of the power of the medium, her work raises a question at its core: who owns a photograph – the photographer, the subject, the archivist, or the viewer?