Shadow and Synagogue

Arthur Tress

1974

Photograph featuring shadow of a face and a hand over a wall with Hebrew text.
Shadow and Synagogue is one of a series of about one hundred photographs by Tress that appear in his 1975 book, Shadow, A Novel in Photographs. In the book’s visual narrative, the photographer’s shadow becomes the protagonist in a spiritual odyssey. After a variety of experiences in different locations, it finally ascends to a state of illumination. Here the shadow falls on the tablets with the Ten Commandments. Tress credited anthropological studies on the out-of-body trances of shamanistic healers as his inspiration for the project: “These ancient psychic journeys seemed to me similar in their imaginative themes to the subjects of our own private dream voyages. I could act out these transformative travels by using my own particular body to create a dancing mythical shadow figure that would tell the story of just one such trip to the otherworld.”

Credits

Courtesy of the artist.

Published in: The Posen Library of Jewish Culture and Civilization, vol. 10.

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