The tallit is a keystone of Jewish ritual. On high holidays, a father holds his tallit above his head, shielding his children beneath it as they receive the special blessing. A bride and groom stand beneath its four corners, as they become a unit before the community. And finally, in death, one is wrapped in a tallit as they are put to rest. The tallit is as icon of Jewish faith, a comfort, a shield, a symbol of pride. A traditional tallit has four corners, each adorned with a tassel. Black stripes run along its shortest sides. Made with cyanotype, the traditional black stipes are replaced by the folds of blue ink hardened by the sun, This tallit captures the moment in which it was worn. A portable monument to the moment of its creation.
The four of us, tied each string with the traditional tcheilat.
The tallit is a keystone of Jewish ritual. On high holidays, a father holds his tallit above his head, shielding his children beneath it as they receive the special blessing. A bride and groom stand beneath its four corners, as they become a unit before the community. And finally, in death, one is wrapped in a tallit as they are put to rest. The tallit is as icon of Jewish faith, a comfort, a shield, a symbol of pride. A traditional tallit has four corners, each adorned with a tassel. Black stripes run along its shortest sides. Made with cyanotype, the traditional black stipes are replaced by the folds of blue ink hardened by the sun, This tallit captures the moment in which it was worn. A portable monument to the moment of its creation.
The four of us, tied each string with the traditional tcheilat.
The tallit is a keystone of Jewish ritual. On high holidays, a father holds his tallit above his head, shielding his children beneath it as they receive the special blessing. A bride and groom stand beneath its four corners, as they become a unit before the community. And finally, in death, one is wrapped in a tallit as they are put to rest. The tallit is as icon of Jewish faith, a comfort, a shield, a symbol of pride. A traditional tallit has four corners, each adorned with a tassel. Black stripes run along its shortest sides. Made with cyanotype, the traditional black stipes are replaced by the folds of blue ink hardened by the sun, This tallit captures the moment in which it was worn. A portable monument to the moment of its creation.
The four of us, tied each string with the traditional tcheilat.
The tallit is a keystone of Jewish ritual. On high holidays, a father holds his tallit above his head, shielding his children beneath it as they receive the special blessing. A bride and groom stand beneath its four corners, as they become a unit before the community. And finally, in death, one is wrapped in a tallit as they are put to rest. The tallit is as icon of Jewish faith, a comfort, a shield, a symbol of pride. A traditional tallit has four corners, each adorned with a tassel. Black stripes run along its shortest sides. Made with cyanotype, the traditional black stipes are replaced by the folds of blue ink hardened by the sun, This tallit captures the moment in which it was worn. A portable monument to the moment of its creation.
The four of us, tied each string with the traditional tcheilat.
The tallit is a keystone of Jewish ritual. On high holidays, a father holds his tallit above his head, shielding his children beneath it as they receive the special blessing. A bride and groom stand beneath its four corners, as they become a unit before the community. And finally, in death, one is wrapped in a tallit as they are put to rest. The tallit is as icon of Jewish faith, a comfort, a shield, a symbol of pride. A traditional tallit has four corners, each adorned with a tassel. Black stripes run along its shortest sides. Made with cyanotype, the traditional black stipes are replaced by the folds of blue ink hardened by the sun, This tallit captures the moment in which it was worn. A portable monument to the moment of its creation.
The four of us, tied each string with the traditional tcheilat.
In this age of digital reproduction, what really separates a picture from a painting? If I can recreate the nuance of a painting within a photograph, what does it become? What does it mean for the painting? Is its labor devalued?
These are all pictures of domestic objects. See how they transcend, once blurred to the point of abstraction.
Four Corners of the Earth is a collaborative piece done for my research project, Engaging from Afar. The piece is a tallit made using cyanotype, a printmaking process that uses photo-reactive chemicals to create images using the sun. To make the blue folds, I used fabric pretreated with the photo-reactive chemicals and wore it in the traditional way religious men wear a tallit. Cyanotype is one of my favorite materials to work with because the moment of its making is embedded in finished project – the result is a portable monument to the moment of its creation. Each corner of the garment was adorned with a tassel, or tzitzit, using traditional strings dyed with tcheilet, a blue dye derived from a specific sea snail. It was a collaborative effort as each tassel was tied differently by the four members of my immediate family according to four separate Rabbinic traditions.
On high holidays, a father holds his tallit above his head, shielding his children as they receive the priestly blessing. A bride and groom stand beneath its four corners, as they become a unit before the community. And finally, in death, one is wrapped in a tallit as they are put to rest. The tallit is as icon of Jewish faith, a comfort, a shield, a symbol of pride. I chose to create a tallit because of its significance in Judaism as iconography of Jewish ritual and life itself. The tallit is present for most major life milestones –becoming an adult (bar/bat mitzvah), marriage, and death – and is constant presence in daily prayer, thus was a natural extension of the themes I was exploring in my other collaborations.