Using photography and text as her gateway, Ora Cohen’s black and white archival pigment prints challenge and confront gender identity. Born in Akko, and now living in Pardes Hanna-Karkur, Israel, Cohen began her career 20 years ago, and now works with both digital and film. In one of her most accomplished series, Cohen traveled to Berlin to photograph 20 women who look like men and has also photographed herself. Her process begins by finding her subjects through social media outlets, making contact and forging connections, all steps that inspire what happens before the camera.
Cohen’s most recent body of work features images of landscapes taken during her stay in the United States. They represent the power of nature in the face of existential questions like belongingness and loneliness. In landscape photography, Cohen finds stillness and silence away from the noise and chaos of urban environments. The approach she takes is the same as with portraits. She looks for contrasts of beauty and power as well as the soft and rough qualities of lines, curves, and edges.
