Photographs from the Doron Sebbag Art Collection, O.R.S Ltd.

The year 2026 marks the bicentennial of the first surviving photograph in history: Joseph Nicéphore Niépce’s View from the Window at Le Gras (1826–27). This inaugural image laid the foundation for the notion of the camera as a window opening onto the “truth,” and of the photographer as an observer lying in wait for the right moment to capture reality as it is. Most of the works shown here were created during the final decade of the 20th century, a turning point when the medium stood on the brink of the digital revolution. This milestone marked a profound conceptual shift: photography ceased to function as a passive tool of documentation and became an active practice of constructing reality.
The exhibition traces this transformation of the photographic medium from documentation that reflects reality to a calculated act of construction, staging, and invention. Through the works of artists such as Nan Goldin, Vik Muniz, Rineke Dijkstra, David Spero, James Casebere, and Ori Gersht, it reveals the seams between reality and fiction, inviting the viewer to question appearances and reflect on the gap between what the eye sees and what the mind interprets.
The practice of constructing an entire world within the studio, only for the purpose of photographing it, represents one of the most compelling turns in the history of the medium. Rather than venturing into the world in search of the “decisive moment,” the artist becomes director, architect, or sculptor, using tangible materials (from cardboard and adhesive to dust and wire) to build a makeshift structure whose existence is intended solely for the lens. This gesture severs photography from its historical commitment to objective “truth” and transforms it into an auteur practice; no longer evidence of what once was, but testimony to an inner vision shaped through careful thought and meticulous planning.
The power of the featured works lies not in successful deception or illusion, but in the moment the viewer becomes complicit in the secret of their creation, realizing that photographic truth is always a matter of perspective. In an age of engineered and synthetic digital images, which increasingly unsettle our grasp of the real, these works remind us that the truth resides not only in what the eye beholds, but also in what the hand constructs and the heart remembers.