Yecheskel Schwab-Friend of Photography

New York City NY

24 January, 2022

8:33 AM

Description

Yecheskel Schwab is a celebrated photographer. Few people outside the photographic world may have heard of him, but surely if you are a photographer you have had some contact with him. Or you will always meet someone who has been lucky enough to shake hands with him. He has mischievous eyes that have lived, an immense wisdom and a way of photographing that places him next to the classics. Yecheskel Schwab has few published articles. He has always wanted to help others rather than dwell on his notable work. It is difficult to find his work on the internet. Fortunately you can find some of his work on Behance (the world's largest creative network for showcasing and discovering creative work). Last week we met with Yecheskel Schwab to ask him a series of questions and learn more about his artistic journey. Here is what this photographer extraordinaire had to say. Thanks for chatting with us Yecheskel. As usual, we start by asking you about your career. How did you start? What led you to become a photographer? Yecheskel Schwab: The clichéd truth is that an artist is not made, he is born. For me, there is no greater lie than the over-education of art. It is castrating what is natural or what is not. The same is true for high-performance athletes, opera talents, and aspiring artists. I have been an artist for as long as I can remember and I am learning to live with the freedom that is innate to me and in defense of my work. I dedicate myself to this because it is the only thing I know how to do and it is what I want to dedicate my life to. As a child I studied classical painting, but I don't consider myself a painter with capital letters. Then I spent a couple of years sculpting imaginary characters out of corn dough, play dough, and the like. Soon my mother discovered that I write very well, but she did not like what I wrote about, because even then she was traditional and I liked to base my characters on people close to me –as most writers do. So writing was fine, but secret. Without a doubt, your images are out of the ordinary. How would you define your work? In what genre would you fit it? Yecheskel Schwab: I do not frame my work, there is nothing more distant from my way of understanding the world than the pretense of a structure. I let work rule my life and build itself. Your photography mixes many things. How is the process to get to unite things as different as those that appear in your images? Does everything arise spontaneously from your imagination or is it the result of a long process of elaboration? Yecheskel Schwab: All processes trigger something inward or outward and my work comes from within, from the entrails, and then opens up to interpretation. What do you want to achieve through your photos? Are you trying to provoke the viewer, make them think or is it just a way of expressing yourself? Yecheskel Schwab: Make an offering to art with my own soul, thought and life. In addition to photography, you use many other media. Do you consider yourself a photographer or simply a visual artist? Do you think photography has more capacity to reach people by combining it with other types of media? Yecheskel Schwab: I would say that I am a visual artist who for the moment is fascinated by the speed of photography, but does not have the faculties of permanence in a medium. Media blending is, so to speak, the fate of my language, but I don't think it's the correct image path, it's just a coincidence.