Oren Hasson: My Pictorial Swift CV
My photography has accompanied me through my career as a professional zoologist and naturalist, and then as a therapist and evolutionary psychologist with a special interest in interpersonal communication. Long enough to not take art lightly. I have always been drawn to experimentation, which has brought me to repeatedly ask myself what I am doing with my photography, what others are doing with theirs, and why. Along this personal voyage, my thoughts drifted from the art of nature to the nature of art. The following is a brief description of some of my leading directions.
Light Upon A Time — Photographing The 4th Dimension
Photography is about time no less than it is about light.
Cameras slice time onto a visual platform. Each slice spans a certain time interval controlled by the photographer — often no longer than a tiny fraction of a second, but sometimes extended to minutes or even hours in long-exposure photography. Nostalgia connects so naturally to photography because we use these preserved slices of time to refresh or rebuild memories of important moments. Our brains take these visual memories and use them to construct meaningful stories.
When anchored in family albums, memories either revert to previous interpretations, or the mind makes the effort to construct a new sense of them — a new story — by reconstructing life-defining moments in and around these photographs. Photo therapy is built upon precisely such processes.
Sliding Along The Fourth Dimension
When I shoot a photograph or create an image, the fourth dimension—time—is always on my mind.
The simplest way to let time infiltrate a photograph is to use a long shutter speed. A 20-minute exposure will indeed record everything that happens during those 20 minutes. This can be great for very slow-moving subjects in empty (non-lit) spaces, such as star trails in the night sky. Long exposures may produce beautiful, meaningful photographs when careful panning is used, isolating some objects and blurring others. Normally, however, overlapping movements within a frame make an image incomprehensible. So there must be other ways to do it as well.
Therefore, when I am planning a shot, I keep asking myself:
- Is this a true representation of reality?
- What would happen to a photograph if I altered its fourth dimension?
- Will my interpretation of space-time, via my choice of photographic method, make sense to others?
- Does any of this matter?
Since reality is, in my mind, a tricky business — certainly when related to photography — I place no less weight on using photography to tell a story than on capturing what was actually there. That story is my interpretation of reality.
The Galleries
Some of my galleries focus on a specific concept; others on a particular subject, collecting images from a short-term project, a very long-term one, or an open-ended exploration. These were created with a specific creative, ideological, emotional or social intention in mind.
Iris to Iris is one such an open ended project, photographing the beautiful, endangered iris flowers, endemic to Israel, in their natural sensitive habitats. Wrinkles in Time is another project — a yearlong personal exploration beneath a river bridge, of the cycle of birth, death, and aging. Life and the art of photography melted into a story about the changes we undergo over time: reflections on denial, disbelief, and the wrinkles carved by its unstoppable flow. This was my first solo exhibition.
Challenges in the Wind was my second, following the cycling club of Etgarim, an Israeli nonprofit that pairs volunteers with people with physical or mental disabilities, riding through Tel Aviv’s Yarkon Park. To convey the vitality, the strong will, and the inner experience of tandem riding through the park, I used techniques I had developed with spacetime in mind. Exhibition sales were dedicated to the organization. Some of these techniques are also shown in the Spacetime Photography gallery.
Training is a collection of photographs taken from train windows running at high speed, using low shutter speeds — a project cut short by the pandemic. They document the distinctive people and human-altered habitats I encountered along the railway lines.
In other galleries I have condensed my photographs like droplets gathering in a cloud. Taken on the fly, with no particular goal beyond expressing what I saw and felt, they nonetheless connect — over years — to threads of ideas and interpretations I have followed whenever opportunities arose.
PhotoArt Blog
I use my blog to write about photography and art, and about my own work. Posts reflect both my love of photography and my deep personal interest in understanding the social role of art in the evolution of human culture.
Exhibitions, Awards and Publications
Awards and Prizes
2024: Zoological Gardens in Jerusalem, Competitive group exhibition, (1) Title: Slow Loris. (2) Title: Look, I Jump!
2022: 16th International Color Awards. Nominated, Category: Sport. Title: And Yet They Move.
2021: IPA (International Photography Awards). Honorable Mention, Category: Advertising-Self Promotion. Title: Through the Train’s Window.
2021: 15th International Color Awards. Nominated, Category: Wildlife. Title: Fragile Existence.
2020: Senior Citizens in Photography. 3rd Prize, The Israeli Office of Social Equality. Subject: Senior Citizens in a Cover Album. Title: Abby Road.
2020: Tifa (Tokyo International Foto Awards). Honorable Mention, Category: Fin Art. Title: A Dreamy Early Morning.
2020: 14th International Color Awards. Honorable Mention, Category: Fine Art. Title: Yellow Fish Pond.
2020: IPA (International Photography Awards). Honorable Mention, Category: Sport-Sport Competitions. Title: Giro D’Italia 2018 entering Tel Aviv.
2020: IPA (International Photography Awards) OneShot: Movement. Honorable Mention, Category: Fine Art. Title: Pigeon.
2020: 15th Black and White Color Awards. Finalist, Category: Silhouette. Title: Her Mind on Her Way to School.
2019: 14th Black and White Color Awards. Finalist, Category: Fine Art. Title: Personae.
2019: 13th International Color Awards.(1) Honorable Mention, Category: Sport. Title: In Between Skies. (2) Nominated: Category: People. Title: Amongst the Gazania Flowers. (3) Nominated, Category: Fine Art. Title: A Dreamy Early Morning.
2018: Tifa (Tokyo International Foto Awards). Honorable Mention, Category: Science/Environment. Title: Invasion.
2018: IPA (International Photography Awards). Honorable Mention, Category: Special/Digitally Enhanced. Title: Personae.
2016: The Botanical Garden of the Hebrew University and The Botanical Garden of San Diego. 3rd Prize. Title: Dancing in White in the Desert.
2013: 5th Edition of the Pullux Awards. Honorable Mentions: (1) Category Environment. Title: Intrusion. (2) Category: Nature. Title: Being Different.
2013: San Diego Art Institute. In a Group Exhibition: The Art of Photography Show. Title: Libby’s One Year Birthday.
Solo Exhibitions
2019: Challenging the Wind. Photographs in space-time of Beith Shneor, the Bicycling Club of Etgarim Institute in the Yarkon Park.
2012: Wrinkles in Time. Reflections of the time passes, in Photographs and Poems.
Publications: Photographic Articles
2015: Israeli Lens Magazine No. 11. Subject: Still Life. Title: Iris to Iris.
1999: Massa Acher: Hawaii Before Mankind.
1998: Massa Acher: Eagle Feathers and the Red Cross: Native American Ceremonies.