biography

Matya Shick Matya Shick is a photographer who was born in Kibbutz Urim. Shick attained an MA in Biochemistry from Tel - Aviv University. She specialises in artistic aerial photography of Israeli landscape. Her work has been exhibited in museums and galleries in Israel and abroad: in Bank Hapoalim, Tel – Aviv; Tel - Hai Museum of Photography; Einan Gallery, Modi’in; Anne Julie Gallery, Denmark; Montefiore Gallery ,Jaffa Art Salon, Venice Art Biennale, Venice; and in the Knesset, Israeli house of parliament. Nature’s changes and its disappearance and renewal are topics which interest Matya Shick as an artist who experienced some personal crisis. Shick chose the vantage point of aerial photography which she ‘re-connects’ with the ground through imprinting on ceramic porcelain tiles, and metal. The aerial photography is taken mainly from a light, twin-engine plane, Air Cam, which has been developed and adjusted especially for National Geographic. It has no canopy and is able to fly low and slow. The shooting is done while flying, without a tripod and in constant wind, so that the photographer’s speed of reaction and steady hand are vital. The perspective and the high angle present a broad vista of powerful and fascinating Israeli landscape in which seasonal, geological and ecological changes take place. Shick finds inspiration in the amazing palette of colours Nature uses in order to ‘paint’ the landscape of Israel. She documents the dissonance between the remarkable landscape texture and the seasonal ecological process of the land, and highlights the change nature goes through in order to achieve a new ecological balance, thus letting the region go on surviving.