Naomi Leshem (; born 3 November 1963) is an Israeli photographer. Her works are in the collections of the

Israel Museum The Israel Museum (, ''Muze'on Yisrael'', ) is an Art museum, art and archaeology museum in Jerusalem. It was established in 1965 as Israel's largest and foremost cultural institution, and one of the world's leading Encyclopedic museum, encyclopa ...

in Jerusalem, the

Tel Aviv Museum of Art The Tel Aviv Museum of Art ( ''Muzeon Tel Aviv Leomanut'') is an art museum in Tel Aviv, Israel. The museum is dedicated to the preservation and display of modern and contemporary art both from Israel and around the world. History The Tel Aviv ...

, the

Norton Museum of Art The Norton Museum of Art is an art museum in West Palm Beach, Florida. The museum has a collection that includes over 8,200 works, with a concentration in Western art history, European, Visual arts of the United States, American, and Chinese art ...

in Florida, USA. She received the Constantiner Photography Award for an Israeli Artist from the Tel Aviv Museum of Art in 2009.

Biography

Leshem was born in

Jerusalem Jerusalem is a city in the Southern Levant, on a plateau in the Judaean Mountains between the Mediterranean Sea, Mediterranean and the Dead Sea. It is one of the List of oldest continuously inhabited cities, oldest cities in the world, and ...

, Israel. In 1987, she graduated from the Department of Photography at

Hadassah Academic College Jerusalem Multidisciplinary College (formerly HAC, Hadassah College of Technology) is a publicly funded college in Jerusalem. History The Jerusalem Multidisciplinary College was established in 1970 to meet the changing needs in Israel for trai ...

in Jerusalem. In 1984–1985, she studied General and German Studies at the

University of Fribourg The University of Fribourg (; ) is a public university located in Fribourg, Switzerland. The roots of the university can be traced back to 1580, when the notable Jesuit Peter Canisius founded the Collège Saint-Michel in the City of Fribourg ...

, Switzerland. In 2014, she received the

Mifal HaPayis Mifal HaPais () is Israel's government-owned lottery company. It comprises the state's near monopoly on legal gambling together with the Israel Sports Betting Board (ISBB) (). The name translates to ''The Institute of Lottery'' In 2012, Mifal HaP ...

Arts and Culture Grant. Her photographs feature a range of conceptual explorations of multiple levels of life alongside death, an area in which her work has been influenced by her life as a second-generation Holocaust survivor and an IDF widow from a young age, as well as by the collective Israeli experience. She teaches at various art schools.

Works

Leshem's artworks have been shown in the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Israel Museum in Jerusalem,

Rietberg Museum The Rietberg Museum is a museum in Zürich, Switzerland, displaying Asian, African, American and Oceanian art. It is the largest art museum focusing on non-European art and design in Switzerland, the third-largest museum in Zürich, and the large ...

in Zürich, Norton Museum of Art, Florida, Noga Gallery in Tel Aviv, Andrea Meislin Gallery in New York and in the Ncontemporary Gallery in London. Following the Constantiner Photography Award, an exhibition of her series ''Runways'' was held at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art in 2009–2010. Another exhibition of her work, ''Ghosts of Others'' was held at Noga Gallery of Contemporary Art in Tel Aviv in 2019. In this exhibition, Naomi Leshem departed from her custom of beginning from moments in her own biography and instead used images originating from other people's individual or collective history as her points of departure— from images photographed in the trenches of WWI in Alsace, to a close-up of a Belgian locket from the 1940s lying on the chest of a young Israeli woman. ''Sleepers'' is another series by Leshem, in which she photographed teenagers in Israel,

Switzerland Switzerland, officially the Swiss Confederation, is a landlocked country located in west-central Europe. It is bordered by Italy to the south, France to the west, Germany to the north, and Austria and Liechtenstein to the east. Switzerland ...

, France, and the United States, over a period of three years, in various stages of their sleep in their bedrooms. The series explores portraiture and the interim state of sleep as a representation of a stage between life and death in different cultures and religions. The series was exhibited in the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, the Andrea Meislin Gallery in New York City, the Kunst(zeug)Haus Rapperswil in Switzerland, and other galleries. A book of the exhibition was published jointly by the Swiss publisher Benteli and the Israeli publisher Even Hoshen. The book contains 32 images of sleeping children alongside text written specifically for the works by Israeli writer

Eshkol Nevo Eshkol Nevo (; born 28 February 1971) is an Israeli writer who has published a collection of short stories, five novels and a work of non-fiction. One of his novels, ''Homesick'', was awarded the Book Publishers Association Gold Prize (2005) an ...

, Israeli artists and , Swiss writer , German poet and novelist

Ulla Hahn Ulla Hahn is a German poet and novelist. Partial bibliography Poetry collections * ''Herz über Kopf'' (1981), * ''Spielende'' (1983), * ''Unerhörte Nähe'' (1988), * ''Freudenfeuer'' (1989), * ''Liebesgedichte'' (1993), * ''Epikurs ...

, and Serbian-Canadian writer

David Albahari David Albahari (, ; 15 March 1948 – 30 July 2023) was a Serbian writer. Albahari wrote mainly novels and short stories in the Serbian language. He was also an established translator from English into Serbian language, Serbian. He was a member of ...

Collections

, Jerusalem *

, Florida, USA * Meeschaert Collection, Paris

References

Bibliography

* * *

External links

Official website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Leshem, Naomi 1963 births Living people 20th-century Israeli women artists 21st-century Israeli women artists 20th-century women photographers 21st-century women photographers Artists from Jerusalem Israeli photojournalists Israeli women photographers Women photojournalists