Alexander Bronfer was born in the USSR (Ukraine) and studied in St. Petersburg. After arriving in Israel, he lived in a kibbutz in South Israel, where he fell in love with the Dead Sea region and desert. His primary interest in photography is environmental and sustainability issues and our interaction with nature. As such, Alex’s work is subtly centered on humanity, pushing us to reflect on ourselves and others as part of a collective that exists within a world and not apart from it. For instance, in 2019, he ran into an old acquaintance and immediately noticed her bald and egg-shaped head following chemotherapy. Without asking about details, he said: May I take your picture? This question turned an acquaintance into a friend and the latter into a photo project. For more than two years, he continued to turn his sensitive lens toward his friend, Hanne, as her life shifted from children, grandchildren, and work to periods of more chemotherapy and periods without it.
Alexander was a finalist in multiple international and Israeli photography festivals.
More of his work may be appreciated on his website and his IG account.
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From Dead Sea
People have always been fascinated by the Dead Sea. Over the centuries, this place has been a refuge for messiahs, zealots, martyrs, kings, and ascetics. People prayed, sinned, healed, and killed each other on its shores. They built dams and plants, drilled wells, cut the sea from any source of fresh water, and abandoned it. Meanwhile, we continue praying, sinning, and killing each other, moving our beach chairs and sunshades deeper and deeper, silently, following the disappearing sea.
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From Nebbia (2023)
Local fog in Venice has a name: nebbia. It obliterates all reflections ... and everything that has a shape: buildings, people, colonnades, bridges, statues
-Brodsky, Watermark
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From Hanne (2022)
To take a photograph is to participate in another person’s (or thing’s) mortality, vulnerability, mutability…
-Susan Sontag
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From Tel Aviv – Arad Express
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From Lockdown (2020)
The field near our house, the only place we went to during the first COVID lockdown, became a whole world in my son's imagination.
-Alexander Bronfer
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