Chari-Tea & ?NTIMACY by Dori Caspi

Photography by Dori Caspi for ELSA MICHAEL SMILE PROJECT

“I can draw a clear and conscious separation between the inner place from which I photograph – the energetic source to my art – and the meaning and connotations which might arise from my work.”
Dori Caspi

On Sunday November 30th 2014, at the Luxury Locations of Florence, the Chari-Tea fundraising initiative was held during which the exhibit of “? NTIMACY- Photographs by Dori Caspi” was presented.

The exhibition collects photographs from the artist’s trips to Namibia and Ethiopia.
Promoted and produced by BAG Photo Art Gallery, curated by Giacomo Belloni, Marco Vincenzi, Christina Magnanelli Weitensfelder, the exhibition also presents two works more by the same Israeli photographer: Himba Moments and the OMO project.

On display are the images of the Himba project. They were taken throughout 15 trips to Namibia. Caspi wanted to intimately show the inhabitants of a remote and isolated village populated by the Himba, one of the few tribes left completely uncontaminated by the civilized world.
In his contrasting project, OMO Dori Caspi exhibits the portrayal of the homonymous tribe of Southern Ethiopia.
The images on display recount the oppositions noted by Caspi between the two tribes. One trusting and welcoming that has not yet been contaminated by progress, the other already in a sort of fictional installation already civilized.
The question that is displayed throughout Caspi’s work is whether the discovery and expansion of civilization is in harmony with nature and its elements.
The result is a unique journey in the depths of Africa through the wise and scrutinizing eye of Dori Caspi.

The video recorded during the vernissage at the BAG Photo Art Gallery was projected. Here the photographer tells his spiritual and profoundly human vision of that part of the world. So distant at times, so close.