This mixed collection of photographs and collages by Michael Argov reveals an unfamiliar, even surprising, side of an artist known mostly for his abstract and white, monochromatic paintings. Argov had combined photography and painting since the late fifties. While in painting he worked in the abstract, photography was a path towards a different way of expression. "I want to photograph the most usual thing in an unusual way" .
The vintage photographs presented are a part of a book , Nudes from Israel (Nus d'Israel). Some of the black-and-white photographs of female nudes in the book were taken in the Negev desert just a few days before the Six-Day War. The book was published in Paris in 1971 by Prisma Publishers.
The collages presented at this exhibition are the result of an experiment by Argov, in which he incorporated a photograph and a painting by means of creating contrast—using the brightness of photographic paper and paint—between white, black and color. In April 1967 most of them were shown at the Masada Gallery in Tel Aviv, in an exhibition titled Women.
text by Dr. Dalia Manor, Historian of Israeli Art