Tamir Sher

Capturing Israel

Tamir Sher was born in 1966 and grew up on a Kibbutz in Northern Israel. Tamir began taking photographs when he was just eight years old. From his father, an amateur photographer, Tamir inherited an innate ability to see beauty in everyday things. He learnt to develop and print his own black and white photos at a very young age and has since used those skills to create a life driven by the art he loves.

“The first 36 frames I took were of close friends, family and views from outside a window in my house – nothing extraordinary but, looking at those photos now, I can see how taking a good photo came naturally to me.”

Tamir studied at the Camera Obscura School of Art in Haifa where, over 20 years later, he teaches the very photography class in which he excelled.

“One thing I always tell my students is that you don’t have to go to Mount Kilimanjaro to find something interesting,” says Tamir. “You can find all you need in yourself and your surroundings. You just have to believe you can.”

It was at the school that he met the love of his life, Iris Leal, who also teaches there. Iris is a well-known author in Israel for her novel, poetry and literary reviews for the national newspapers, Haaretz and Maariv.
Tamir and Iris currently live in Tel Aviv with their two children Ariel (16) and Itamar (8).

However, things have not always been so commonplace for the artist.
Tamir worked as a photographer in the Israeli army during the early 90s – a period in his life of which he doesn’t speak in great detail.

In his collection, Openings: a series of atmospheric images depicting openings of underground urban parking lots, Tamir experienced a lot of conflict. “I was suspected of planning a terrorist attack by the guards of those places,” he explains. “This was during very tense times in Israel but I think it was a good example of what we as photographers have to deal with in these parts of the world.”

With a studio on a bustling corner in the centre of Tel-Aviv, derelict buildings and dilapidated, crumbling roofs fill his view. Debris from modern life, rubbish bags, broken tables and bird droppings are the everyday reality that gives Tamir inspiration.

“The elements in my work are really diverse but, in general, I can say [I am inspired] from my closest area,” he says. “I’m always working parallel with different projects so when I am stuck with one, I continue with something else and push it a bit forward.

“I’m a thinker. Ninety percent of the time, I don’t carry a camera. I see something, think about it and return with my tools to take the picture. I don’t want the camera to block the brain. The Jewish philosopher Walter Benjamin said, ‘Artists must use all the tools at their disposal [to get their message across], but they must learn to do it gently’.”

Tamir appreciates artists who work with the contemporary times in mind as well as with consideration to the past. Some of his favourites include Japanese photographers Hiroshi Sugimoto and Yasumasa Morimura, Russian photographer Boris Mikhailov and the cinematographer Nikita Mikhalkov.

www.tamirsher.com