My name is Ilit Azoulay and I'm participating in the exhibition Ocean of Images with the work name Shifting Degrees of Certainty. Shifting Degrees of Certainty is an image of a map or a brain at the same time containing 85 puzzle pieces. For each puzzle, it's an image that has a background story, a historical background, I would say, that served to the viewer via an audio guide device. >> Can you talk to me about the methodology that you used or the process that you used doing that piece? >> Yes, when I arrived to Germany, I started to spot the places that haven't been bombed during the Second World War. Because I wanted to reach the process or the understanding of how certain public spaces are being preserved. And after coming from Israel and knowing, tracing the law of conservation and preservation in Israel, I was very interested to see how it's taking place in Germany. I started to photograph objects, architecture relics, certain images, all connected to architecture. And the only main umbrella that I knew at that point is that everything that I'm photographing is either under conservation, preservation or restoration status. And then I started a process of understanding, asking question regarding the historical background of each image that I photograph. And those questions took me to a road that surprised me very much and creates the system and the way that the work shifts itself. And it was usually correspondence with the archives or a certain expert concerning the object or the image that I photographed. >> So the piece is made of 85 images, but there are also sounds and recordings that you did during your residency. My question is, was it conceived to be that way right from the start? >> Yeah, usually when I start a project, the very few basic rules that I know from the beginning, but I have to have a big bubble of unknowing and to open my ears to what's appeared and revealed from the process. And it opened in a way for me a possibility of staring, sometimes even leaving your eyes on an image that is not necessarily very interesting, but while listening to a journey, imagining a three-dimensional aspect of other images that could be there in a way. >> So you started working with the analog process at the beginning of your career, and then you switched to digital. How that has affected your work, and do you feel sometimes nostalgic about the old analog process? >> Yes, I think, for me, it's all mixed with a personal development. And when I take myself back then, I felt I would say that in the word of communication and I feel that the camera is a communication tool, but also in other aspect, all kinds of communication. There is so little precise to think, there is so little moments of real meetings. So when I found myself with my first camera that I got from my grandfather, a Rolleiflex with a small macro lens, I found this special essence or special mood of meeting with objects. And I felt this is photography for me. So by mistake, in a way, there was suddenly no negatives in Israel. And I found myself holding a digital camera. But compared to the four by five negative, it was so shallow, the results. So I decided to think from the beginning of photography and to think about this tool that painter used, creating a grid on a piece of a glass and photographing the reality from each square in this grid. And then combine it together, maybe I could have something that is a little bit similar to this four by five aspect that really bring material inside. [MUSIC]
