{"id":9866,"date":"2014-12-19T00:12:11","date_gmt":"2014-12-19T08:12:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/?p=9866"},"modified":"2014-12-17T20:10:52","modified_gmt":"2014-12-18T04:10:52","slug":"look-up-to-art","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/2014\/12\/19\/look-up-to-art\/","title":{"rendered":"Look up to art"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sharon Tenenbaum\u2019s work can be seen on billboards above highways in Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal. (photo by\u00a0Sharon Tenenbaum)<\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Sharon Tenenbaum discovered her love of photography in 2006 on a trip to South East Asia. In 2014, only eight years later, she is a nationally recognized photographer. From Dec. 15 to Jan. 15, four of her photographs will be displayed on billboards along Canadian highways and bridges as part of Paint the City (paintthecity.org<\/a>), an international initiative to promote arts in unexpected places.<\/p>\n

Tenenbaum talked to the Independent<\/em> about her transformation from an engineer dissatisfied with her career to a successful artist.<\/p>\n

\u201cLast year, I participated in a RAW Artists (rawartists.org<\/a>) competition,\u201d she said, explaining how her images found their way to the billboards. \u201cRAW is an art organization supporting artists in the first 10 years of their career. I became a finalist, together with another artist. Then, the organizer called me and said she nominated us for the Paint the City project. I didn\u2019t even know about them.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to Tenenbaum, Paint the City selected the winner through social media. They stipulated that the one who got more \u201cLikes\u201d on Facebook and Twitter would win. \u201cI had to recruit all my friends and even my family in Israel, and my family and friends in turn incited everyone they knew to login and vote for me. I won. I guess I have more friends,\u201d she joked.<\/p>\n

In reality, it was a long road from her first travel photos to her sophisticated billboard images displayed on the highways of Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt first, many people discouraged me. They would say: \u2018She discovered a camera, so what?\u2019 But I can\u2019t see myself doing anything else. I didn\u2019t care what anyone said. I have confidence in myself.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"photo<\/a>
Sharon Tenenbaum: \u201cA color photo doesn\u2019t have to be as good as black and white.” (photo from Sharon Tenenbaum)<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In the beginning, what she did was photojournalism, documenting everyday life, she said. \u201cIn Asia, I took photos of buildings and people, but when I returned to Vancouver, I couldn\u2019t photograph people here. It requires legal permissions, so I started photographing architecture, rediscovering Vancouver. I wasn\u2019t just documenting anymore; it was my interpretation of what I saw.\u201d<\/p>\n

Out of her engineering background sprouted her passion for photographing things constructed by human beings. \u201cI have a talent to see how elements of the whole work in harmony, how shapes and lines come together. I like modern architecture with its clean lines. The approach is artistic. The image has to speak to the heart.\u201d<\/p>\n

Her stark black and white images that won their places on billboards speak to people\u2019s hearts. They show the artist\u2019s unerring sense of light and shadows, her flair for the dramatic. Her quest for visual tension resulted in her unique series of bridges, all of them spectacular black and white instants in time and space. Some of them are Vancouver bridges, others she took during her travels.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you travel,\u201d she explained, \u201cyou see everything with new eyes. It\u2019s harder to achieve at home. I traveled a lot at first. Now I only travel to specific locations. If I want to photograph a certain bridge, I research it, then go there to take pictures.\u201d<\/p>\n

Most of her photographs are black and white. \u201cWhen you use color in a photo, it steals the show,\u201d she said. \u201cA color photo doesn\u2019t have to be as good as black and white. Sometimes, if you take color out of the image, it has no merit otherwise. Black and white photos are more challenging. The image must stand on its own. In many cases, color feels like cheating. I use color in my photos only when it\u2019s essential, when color is what it\u2019s all about. Color is an emotion. When I need to convey that emotion, I leave the colors intact. The same image seems to tell different stories when it\u2019s in color or in black and white.\u201d<\/p>\n

Recently, she turned to a new technique, new stories infused with color. She started painting on top of her photographs. She applied this development not to the man-made structures but to something created by nature: trees.<\/p>\n

\u201cI started with one image of a tree, a photo from Portugal. There is a maple tree outside my window; it\u2019s gorgeous in the fall. It inspired me. I wanted to convey such beauty with my image too, so I painted on top. Then I participated in Culture Crawl, and this painting was very successful. I started doing more.\u201d<\/p>\n

Like every artist, she strives to evolve, constantly finding fresh dimensions in her art. \u201cI want to keep changing. I don\u2019t want to have one style associated with me. Every artist needs to grow. After awhile, you get bored with the old stuff. Look at Picasso. He had five distinctive stages, each one unrecognizable from the others. Same with me. I have to keep reinventing myself.\u201d<\/p>\n

She also helps others reinvent themselves: she teaches, offering workshops in photo skills, as well as creativity. \u201cI love teaching, love sharing what I know. Sometimes, when I teach, it clarifies the concept for me as well. I teach people how to be artists. Creativity has different phases. I teach my students how to get into each one, how to recognize and be receptive to new ideas. But then, each idea needs a follow up, lots of hard work. That\u2019s also part of creativity.\u201d<\/p>\n

For more on her work, visit sharontenenbaum.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Olga Livshin<\/strong> is a Vancouver freelance writer. She can be reached at olgagodim@gmail.com<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sharon Tenenbaum\u2019s work can be seen on billboards above highways in Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal. (photo by\u00a0Sharon Tenenbaum) Sharon Tenenbaum discovered her love of photography in 2006 on a trip to South East Asia. In 2014, only eight years later, she is a nationally recognized photographer. From Dec. 15 to Jan. 15, four of her […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":9828,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[989],"tags":[2810,2747,2809,2808],"class_list":["post-9866","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-visual-arts","tag-paint-the-city","tag-photography","tag-raw-artists","tag-sharon-tenenbaum"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":8}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9866","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9866"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9866\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9828"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9866"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9866"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9866"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}