Hasankeyf

Dafna Talmor’s Constructed Landscapes are the end result of many years of frustration caused by her own photographs. The images are taken in different countries, among which are Israel, Venezuela, the UK and the United States, but their initial purpose was nothing more than personal keepsakes. As Talmor accumulated a large archive, she became increasingly conscious that the photographs don’t show much about the places that they depict and they are just that — pictures of places she once visited. She decided to use them as her source material instead of photographs in their own right in order to create something new and this is how her ongoing series was born.

The story takes desolated buildings and structures as its starting point. Devoid of human presence, albeit designed and constructed by humans, these are places that were once the product of a utopian vision.

The front yard is as much a metaphor as it is a space. Homes reflect the material successes of their inhabitants, their aesthetic tastes, and concrete the ties that bind family, lovers, and friends. When the shelter-in-place order was announced in March and time came to a proverbial standstill, I turned to my community to make portraits of people in their front yards.