Photographer Assaf Hinden: ownership, preservation and the manipulation of images

In 1937, works owned by Jewish art collector and philanthropist Emma Budge were placed up for auction in Nazi Germany against her will. To this day, many pieces remain missing. Stories like this have long resonated with Assaf Hinden, the descendant of a German-Jewish father and a mother who immigrated from Morocco.

Artist and curator Hinden went on to collaborate with researcher Dr Eyal Dolev to create ‘A Parallel Chronicle’ as a visual investigation into this elusive story. Through staged photography, found materials, collage and 3D modelling, the Tel Aviv-based photographer confronts and constructs ideas of ownership over art.

With his reimaginings of original artworks, such an intricate parrot sculpture now smoothly set in an alluring jade-green, Hinden questions the role of the archive, preservation, and the manipulation of image and therefore meaning. Alongside this, Hinden created a hyper-realistic 3D auction catalogue as a fictional presentation of the ‘new’ artworks he created, noting that the constraints of the pandemic meant that this expansive work is partially a by-product of staying at home. 

Hinden’s dynamic work as both artist and curator is developing fast, with two solo shows already and more exciting plans to exhibit with Prix Photoforum in Switzerland, Startpoint Prize in Prague and The Institution at Israel’s The Ramat Gan Museum of Art.

Dream collaborator: ‘It would be the Lebanese artist Walid Raad (based in New York). I believe he created one of the most important bodies of works in recent decades, “The Atlas Group”: a 14-year project of a fictional collective addressing the historical narrative of the Lebanese civil war, into which he accommodated and contextualised his subjective input. I believe he shaped a new approach of dealing with historical issues and presenting them in a contemporary environment.’

INFORMATION

assafhinden.com

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