Flora Abyssus

Indie Gallery, Tel Aviv

A dual exhibition by Zohar Elazar and Yuval Yairi    Curator: Etty Schwartz

In Flora Abyssus, two distinct photographic voices converge in a compelling dialogue about medium, perception, and transformation. Though Zohar Elazar and Yuval Yairi are familiar with each other’s work and have collaborated before, their methods and visual languages are strikingly different—sometimes even diametrically opposed.

Zohar Elazar
Elazar’s photographs are un-staged and shot on film in various locations, primarily in northern Israel. Her work embraces extreme lighting conditions, where photographic impressions emerge from near-total darkness or intense, contrasting light. These are spaces where light—the essential element of photography—is either overwhelming or entirely absent. After developing the film, she prints in the darkroom using an enlarger, scans the print, and creates a new source for enlargement. Her printing process becomes a crucial act of translation, where disorientation, inversion, and contrast form a visual language. The image may appear clear, but its meaning remains ambiguous, resisting direct interpretation.

Yuval Yairi
Yairi works in the studio, constructing still-life environments rich with objects that evolve over time. He photographs these scenes using a pre-set grid, dividing the composition into small squares. Within each, he integrates fragments from photographs taken at different moments, creating a layered image of multiple temporalities. A young cypress sapling is brought into the studio and placed in a custom-built artificial habitat—protected from natural and human threats—with the hope that it will grow stronger and eventually be planted in permanent soil. Beneath the surface, nourishing materials and symbolic objects are revealed, intended to support the tree’s development and prepare it for its future in the real world.
When the cultivation fails and the sapling dies, it becomes the subject of a new photographic series. Transparencies printed with images of cypresses—some living, some dead—are placed within glass structures reminiscent of the glass plates used in early photography.

The title Flora Abyssus evokes the biblical creation story, where the world begins in darkness over the abyss. Gradually, as the hovering spirit separates sky from water, life begins to emerge. This distant, zoomed-out perspective on existence contrasts with the close-up view of everyday life, where isolated moments are suspended from the natural flow. Uncertainty, collapse, and erosion are inseparable from growth and renewal. In this cyclical rhythm, growth and decay repeat themselves endlessly.