Shimon Attie's work references history in incredibly specific and juxtapositional ways. Many of his photographs incorporate on-site projections, where historically significant images are infused back into a contemporary landscape. For his project The Writing on the Wall, Attie projected pre-World War II photographs of residents of the Jewish Quarter in Berlin onto the walls of the same locations where they were originally taken. The result is an unusual compression of time, one concerned with cultural identity, memory and place. The integration of connected but disparate histories lends a certain melancholy nostalgia to Attie's work that reinterprets the function of the photographic document.
Finistere Medine/Die Schrift an der Wand, 1992/93
Image © Shimon Attie
