Leo Rubinfien - Wounded Cities

- New York -

People all over are basically the same, behave basically the same, are challenged by the same basic fears and share the same basic hopes.

- Tokyo -

Artist photographer Leo Rubinfien lived the tragedy of 9/11 in Manhattan, close to the World Trade Center. He realized that ever after the look of New-Yorkers has not been the same as it used to be, any more. There is a mental wound that remains for years to come in everybody from that place.

- Mumbai -

Leo Rubinfien started to think at wounded cities: places in the world that passed through similar tragedies. He decided to travel through these cities and to observe people, to understand their looks, to find out that they were living with the same mental wounds as him.

- Hebron -

It was perhaps also a therapeutic experience: you have to understand what's inside them in order to understand yourself, your unconscious, your reflexes, your eyes, to get free.

- Moscow -

The result of his travels is a book, and this set of photographs, Wounded Cities: New York, and London, and Moscow, and Jerusalem, and Hebron, and Tel Aviv, and Manila, and Jakarta, and Casablanca, and Tokyo, and Nairobi, and Mumbai, among others. Everywhere the same look, hiding the same basic dread.




I visited his exhibition at Corcoran, yesterday, and I was thinking at my own mental wounds that took years to disappear, after the earthquake in Bucharest, in 1977.

(The images in this post are reproduced from Monthlyphoto)

(Corcoran)