Excellence Prize
OUTSIDE
Still Image
Artist : Alexander MENDELEVICH
(Israel)
At first glance, the photographs seem to be scenes extracted from normal life. They are delicate images with a distinctive atmosphere. However, once you start paying attention to the human figures, you notice that they have a slight stoop or their posture seems uncomfortable, and you start to sense a psychological tension. Then these hitherto undramatic scenes start to take on an extraordinary aspect.

Alexander MENDELEVICH
He was born in Pyatigorsk, in the Northern Caucasus region of Russia in 1979. After high school and three years at an institute of economy and management, he moved to Israel in 2000. He served in the army from 2002 to 2004, and from 2004 to 2008, he did his B.F.A. study at the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design, Jerusalem (Photography department). He participated in several exhibitions in Jerusalem and in Moscow.
I am very glad my work was appreciated by the festival Jury, that I had the opportunity to participate in this prestigious contest, and that I won the prize -- thank you very much! I make a kind of performance using staged photos and inserting scenes in which some distortion or discomfort occurs. "Outside" -- because it resides in the field of fantasy, a kind of "incubator," a place where feelings, pain, vulnerability and emotional experience are exposed, where there occur absurd, associative situations brought together in the context of childhood, questioning femininity and masculinity, I wish to be different concerning reality, to be the new reality. And my wish was to show and create by distortion, absurdity, environment cleansing, some true space where I try to exit from the standard representation of a portrait image.
This work was originally entered as two separate series, but the Jury decided to judge them as one work. The reason was that both of the series were too good for only one of them to be chosen. Human figures, in what first appear to be perfectly ordinary situations, are found to have uncanny facial expressions like wax dolls with no body temperature. And the air around them is also peculiar. Another very important element is that they seem to be going about their daily affairs. It does not require an especially significant event to transform life into something extremely bizarre -- just a minor change is sufficient. This work has an intriguing charm. It is as if it captures an extraordinary and surrealistic moment hiding just below the surface of normal daily life. The directive capability of the artist is also superb, including the selection and rendition of human figures, room settings, costume, and lighting. The way the artist has serialized the work is also very effective.
What makes you create a work?
To make the world stranger.
What tools do you use the most at present?
Digital Photography.
What do you place greatest value on in your work?
I think if it's working, if the work manages to leave a trace on the spectator's feelings, it can be the greatest value.
What personal concept runs through your creative activities?
To look for existence, a story in everything, to transform some moments that I saw, I thought, I felt and I dreamt into visual representation. I try to give things another use, another concept and another way to be viewed.
When you create a work, in what way do you think of a presentation using technologies or media as a means to communicate?
It depends on each specific case.
Could you name a person, a work, or an event that you have been most influenced by?
A little bit from everywhere: writers: Mikhail Lermontov, Jean Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, Fyodor Dostoevsky…; artists: Erwin Wurm, Gottfried Helnwein…; filmmakers: Alexey Balabanov, Kira Muratova…; it can be good advertising.
What kind of work would you like to create in the future?
Something with the title "Tired life".
What is the meaning or importance of creating for you?
It is kind of speech, dialog with myself and with the whole world, the reflection of my thoughts and experience, my reaction and position toward different events.
![2008 [12th] Japan Media Arts Festival Award-winning Works 2008 [12th] Japan Media Arts Festival Award-winning Works](/english/festival/images/h1_jusyousakuhin-en2008.gif)








