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1. In My Mother’s Footsteps 2. Becoming
Yishay Garbasz was born in Israel and studied photography in New York. Much of her photographic work to date has featured the subjects of society, family and human rights. Many of those photographs are not merely records of some event; they are a product of the profound relationship she has with her own psychological state. It is the work In My Mother's Footsteps in particular that is representative of that relationship.
Every photograph produced from this journey in the photographic series, "In My Mother's Footsteps," is accompanied by her mother's handwritten memoir. This exhibition features approximately half of the 63 photographs that comprise the series.
A project undertaken by Garbasz in recent years is her photographic series "Becoming" that records in detail the process of her gender reassignment. Garbasz had actually started out in life as a "him" not a "her."
Her gender identity disorder had caused her to struggle with the divide that existed between her gender and society's idea of what a man was supposed to be. Just as she had resolved to confront her mother's past, or perhaps with even greater resolve, at the beginning of 2008, she decided to undergo a gender reassignment, Since that time, she has in front of a white backdropin a corner of her studio, regularly taken photographs of her completely naked form to observe at fixed points in time the process of a person changing from a man into a woman.
the photographs for "Becoming" in the end, in the same way as "In My Mother's Footsteps", do not attempt to impart to the viewer any necessary sublime tragedy, but rather in those photographs is firmly recorded a human figure, whousing the camera tripod as her crutch has stood up against the history and the society we all share.
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