A life's journey led Carol Eisenberg from her formative years in 1950’s Dayton, Ohio, to her current status as a visual artist with a very unique voice living part of each year in Jaffa, Israel.
As a young girl Carol dreamed of becoming a fashion illustrator. Instead, she married young, had child at the age of 21, earned a college degree in English literature and found work as an advertising copywriter and graphic designer in a large publishing company. In 1969, five months pregnant with her second child, she was forced to quit her job due to company policies regarding pregnancy (typical in U.S. corporations at the time). Angry and frustrated at having to leave a job she loved, Carol joined the struggle for women's liberation and fought, in her own way, for a better and more egalitarian world. She eventually decided to go to law school to be able to carry on that battle more effectively.
Carol enjoyed a 36 year career as an attorney in New York. During this time, she divorced, remarried and lived a productive life, which included family, friends, a sailboat, a vacation home in Maine and, in 2005, a seaside apartment in Jaffa. In 2009, upon her retirement from the practice of her law, Carol and her husband (and their dog) moved permanently to Maine, where they reside for 7 months of each year… returning to Israel to spend the winter and spring in Jaffa.
Carol discovered the camera in 1990, learning the technical aspects of photography on her own. In 2013, after many years of shooting… and selling her photographs commercially … Carol decided to study photography in a more formal way … so she entered a graduate program and in 2016, received a Master of Fine Arts degree in media studies. At the same time, she studied Photoshop independently and developed a unique approach to her creative output.
Living in Yafo/Tel Aviv, Carol encountered a culture that was unlike anything she had known. The streets abound with all manner of detritus. It is a balagan – a definite contrast with the calm, orderly atmosphere in her private residence three floors above street level. For the second time in her life, Carol has chosen to rescue the damaged world. She records the decay of urban life and, with flair and sensitivity, combines those images with scenery from the pastoral environment that envelops her in Maine. The result is a unique and moving artistic experience.
Carol's creations are lyrical, aesthetic and enigmatic, sharing with us her own internal, private experience. Her images are created using a digital technology but are not mere "photographs" or "collages" in the normal sense of the word. Her works are the creation of an artist who has consciously chosen a toolbox that enables her to make images that express her core concerns.
A structured dialog is under way within the groups of works on display at the exhibition, between composition, color and aesthetics and between profound, bipolar messages: optimism with a hint of a potential apocalypse or chaos. The colorful experience, where the latent often overshadows the apparent, conceals or reveals the significance of the idea that had originally motivated the process. Combined, these elements guarantee the onlooker of a unique experience … where question marks are just as significant as exclamation marks.
On the Photography Wall:
Roni Sofer - "Handmade".
Roni Sofer, a documentary photographer, travels in the world, capturing wide range of moments on his camera, from happy to chaos and apocalyptic mirrors... I chose three of his photographs, which will be shown on our photo wall and relate with Carol Eisenberg's Exhibition inside the studio.
Shuki Kook – Curator
Opening on the 21th of February, at 8:00 pm, at the studio gallery on 11 Ruhama st., Tel Aviv.
נשמח לראותכם באירוע הפתיחה, אשר יתקיים בגלריית הסטודיו, ברחוב רוחמה 11.
הגלריה של הסטודיו פתוחה לקהל בימים א'-ה' בשעות 10:00-17:00.
