I am not asking questions about it. Just showing how the facts influenced my life. The watchtower is at the edge of a prison. It has to do with watching, with danger, with war. The lighthouse has to do with coming home, watching, but in the opposite way, the warmth of home.
Observation is a theme that ties together several seemingly disparate elements of the installation.
Two video monitors show simultaneous aerial views of Tel Aviv traffic going in opposite directions. Just feet away, we see the naked and leather-strapped body of a young German woman, a medical subject modeling a back brace. The medical still is particularly poignant because of the wisp of curly hair falling on the anonymous woman's cheek. In the corner of that photo is a smaller picture of a Holocaust victim's face, open-mouthed and bloodied. Death is a subject that has compelled Shirman since he began taking photos, before he became a student of photography in New York and later a teacher of the subject in Jerusalem.