Marli Shamir (9 images)

Just turned 90, Marli Shamir is still photographing in her neighbourhood of Baka in Jerusalem - her works have been seen in international museums, yet in Israel her photographs are still only known to the cognoscenti of photography.

From her beginnings at an art school affiliated with the Bauhaus movement in Berlin to then Palestine, her work includes several developed distinct bodies of work. These include European art nouveau architecture, the stones of Jerusalem, the...
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Just turned 90, Marli Shamir is still photographing in her neighbourhood of Baka in Jerusalem - her works have been seen in international museums, yet in Israel her photographs are still only known to the cognoscenti of photography.

From her beginnings at an art school affiliated with the Bauhaus movement in Berlin to then Palestine, her work includes several developed distinct bodies of work. These include European art nouveau architecture, the stones of Jerusalem, the mud-brick architecture of Mali, and Paris reflections. Despite the varied geographical locations all her works are united by a stark and daring graphic simplicity, and a search for the abstract or unexpected juxtapositions.

She has had many one-person exhibitions world wide, including the Israel Museum, Jerusalem; the Grand Palais, Paris; the Museum of African Art, Belgrade; the Musee Royal de l'Afrique Centrale, Brussels; as well as participating in a number of group exhibitions at the Centre Pompidou, Paris and the British Museum, London. Her first award for photography was in 1951 with the Bezalel School of Art awarding her first prize for landscape photography.

Just over a year ago, a book devoted to her photographs of Mali was published by the French publishing house Grandvaux. The national poet of Mali, Albakaye Ousmane Kounta, created works to match her photographs and the result is not only a pictorial odyssey through parts of Mali, but one of those rare instances when one artist is inspired by another, and creates a new work which compounds the effect of the first. The book is beautifully designed. The black and white photographs are superbly printed to include a wide range of tones.
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