Weekly Post: Ayala Gazit by Jessica Fee

Artist Statement: Born in Haifa, Israel in 1984, I was raised in Tel Aviv by an American mother and an Israeli father. When I was 12 years old my father told me that I had an older brother named James, who lived in Australia. James was the product of a relationship my father had with an english woman named, Linda who moved to Australia. 

I felt a great need for an older brother and became obsessed with the idea of James. Unfortunately I never had the chance to meet James. He committed suicide in October 1996. 

Feeling a need to learn more about James, I used the Tierney Fellowship to travel across Australia in search of James. I wanted to better understand who I'd been mourning all these years. Through the help of his family I was able to follow the steps and echos of my brother whom I will never meet. 

The work I created consists of family snapshots, letters, quotes from conversations alongside my own images taken in Israel and Australia. 

This series on her brother is called, "Was it A Dream?" Her photos are ominous snapshots of her brother's life and her trying to walk through it and learn about him.