Alex Levac's 'Black Box' Opens Two Days Before Israel's Election
A major photography show opens at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art two days before Israelis vote in their legislative elections on 27 October. The show is called Black Box, and it brings together roughly 200 photographs by Alex Levac.
It is a retrospective, meaning a show that gathers work from across a artist's whole career. The museum says it is the first comprehensive solo museum exhibition devoted to Levac, who was born in 1944. He has been a staff photographer at Haaretz, one of Israel's major newspapers, since 1993.
The museum describes him as one of Israel's most prominent and influential photographers. Tel Aviv Museum of Art The exhibition is held at the Eyal Ofer Pavilion, a satellite site of the museum. The pavilion sits next to Habima Square, a central gathering point for weekly protests that have been held there for the past four years.
Levac, speaking about the work, put it simply: "These are photos that tell stories about Israeli society." The Art Newspaper The Art Newspaper, which reported on the opening, describes his pictures as capturing the complexity and absurdity of daily life in Israel.
The museum has also recently bought more than 50 Levac photographs for its permanent collection. A permanent collection is the set of works a museum owns and keeps for the long term, rather than borrowing them for a single show. That means some of these images will remain in the museum's care after the exhibition closes.
Israel's elections are due on 27 October, and the exhibition's opening falls in the final days before the vote. The show's title, Black Box, refers to the photographs themselves, and the museum's official exhibition page carries the name Alex Levac: Black Box.
For readers who cannot visit Tel Aviv, the museum's website hosts the exhibition page with details of the show. Anyone who follows Israeli news will recognise the places and people Levac has spent decades photographing, and the show is meant to be a look back across that long body of work.
