One of her latest exhibitions on port cities is on view until the end of December in Tel Aviv
Capturing moments of life through the lens – a passion that Julia Gat discovered at a very young age and which allows her to live today.
Aged 25, she grew up between Israel and France in a family where art and culture have a prominent place.
i24NEWS met the talented and endearing personality, a specialist in portraits and documentary photography.
"Photography is a way of connecting with people, it helps me to get closer to people in a different way than without the camera. It protects and at the same time it allows us to feel closer to the other," Gat said.
A true vocation born in childhood
Julia was raised in the coastal Israeli city of Tel Aviv and the Kiryat Gat region until the age of 10, then with her parents and siblings she moved to Marseille in the south of France for her father's work, a choreographer who has a dance troupe.
Since then, they have never left France. But it was in Israel that Julia became aware of her love and vocation for photography.
"When I was a child, at home in Israel, there were always cameras and cameras, I photographed nonstop. I also had a passion for the archive, I kept all the photos and videos that I was doing and, at 13, I decided that I wanted to become a photographer," she said.
Encouraged by her mother, director of a contemporary art gallery, she then created a blog to post her photos in order to build her own collection.
But her passion did not stop there. Julia was able to concentrate on her main center of interest because her parents opted for an alternative education at home, based essentially on the personal development of the child and her passions.
She thus very quickly acquired real skills in her chosen field, then everything accelerated. From the age of 15, she did various internships and photo workshops in Marseille, Paris, and at the prestigious Festival de Rencontres de la photographie in Arles, which has taken place every summer since 1970.
This year, Julia also took part in the Festival d'Arles by offering a retrospective of her work since her debut.
"It was very moving to come back with a project that was built from photos that I took during 10 years was the dream," she said.
Noticed at a very young age by photographers, she became an assistant in her mother's gallery.
"In order to perfect my knowledge, I then went to Rotterdam to do my degree in photography at the Willem de Kooning Academy, which I finished last year. My end-of-studies project was exhibited at the Museum of Photography of the city and won the Steenbergen Stipendium public prize," explained Julia.
She has chosen, in her art, to emphasize "human interaction in its pure form, either between humans and their environment or between the human and the photographer."
The photographer now works independently where she works on, among other things, many projects with musicians, dancers, and stylists.
Toward an international career?
Thanks to her talent, young Julia is in demand all over the world and has already made a good start on her international career.
In Israel, she notably undertook a project where she photographs each of the members of her extended family. Julia wants to put include in photos her relationship with her country of origin and the rest of her family who lives there.
One of her latest exhibitions on port cities is on view until the end of December in Tel Aviv at the Assemblage Gallery.
The young woman was also one of the 11 nominees for the Marseille polyptych prize and ended up among the three winners with her autobiographical project titled "khamsa khamsa khamsa" in which she evoked her childhood and adolescence. She won an exhibition in the Sit Down gallery, which will take place in the third arrondissement of Paris in January, and a second exhibition in Hamburg, Germany.
As a true globetrotter, Julia is flying off next week to the Netherlands' port city of Rotterdam where she will work on a project for the Stedelijk Museum, which will consist of making a photo documentary on the daily lives of children and families in the small town of Schiedam.
She will then head to Paris for the premiere of a fashion short film titled "Chaillot Parade" which she designed for her father's contemporary dance troupe, at the Chaillot theater.
Julia is also working on the Paris Photo fair which will be held from November 10 to 13.
It is in New York and Brussels that Julia will end the year with a documentary and a new exhibition. Her determination and professionalism allowed her to obtain fame and to continue this momentum straight toward success.
