Book excerpt: Al Miner and Yoav Rinon, with an interview of the artist by Ronni Baer. The first comprehensive survey of this up-and-coming Israeli-born photographer and video artist, this richly illustrated book presents the best of Gersht’s achingly beautiful photographs and videos and explores how he intertwines sheer spectacles of painterly and narrative imagery with personal and collective memory, metaphysical journeys, contextualized spaces, and the history of art and photography. Ori Gersht’s practice bridges places and histories full of traumas, whether it is a hill overlooking an Arab settlement at a contested border in Israel, war-torn buildings in Sarajevo, the white noise of his train journey to Auschwitz, or the clearing of trees in a forest that once stood witness to mass murder in the Ukraine. Engaging in that difficult arena of not only pushing the photographic camera to the limits of what it can record, but also working in innovative ways with film and video, Gersht’s aesthetic reflects both a highly researched and an instinctive approach to his choice of media. -- Publisher's website.