The Ultimate Present
Ori Gersht's exploding still lifes evoke an anxious world
by Jean Dykstra

The works of Ori Gersht, an Israeli photographer who has lived in London for nearly twenty years, often depict scenes of idyllic natural beauty that contain, or conceal, a history of violence. The blurred, painterly photographs in the series “White Noise” (1999–2000), for example, were taken from the window of a train traveling from Krakow to Auschwitz. The Forest (2005), a thirteen-minute film loop of trees crashing in a forest every minute or so, was filmed in a part of Ukraine where Gersht’s father-in-law hid from the Nazis during World War II. In his newest work—photographs of floral still lifes that are, inexplicably, exploding—Gersht has pushed the violence to the surface, making it the work’s subject, rather than its subtext.

The earliest of these new images, from the series “Time After Time” (2007), are formally composed, and the colors—rich purples, pinks, oranges, and deep greens—are muted, in part because Gersht froze the flowers with liquid nitrogen before setting off each explosion. The photographs defy comprehension at first: something has clearly gone awry, but it’s hard to say just what. In some images, the only clue is a slight blur caused, apparently, by the first shudderings of the blast. In others, petals are clearly...

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