For years, concealed in her studio, Ruth Norman cultivated the introverted melancholic perspective, until a packed, ultra-orthodox wedding, blasting out of a television set, of all events, ignited joy in her. The phenomenon where a mélange of music, dance, ecstasy, madness, a foreign world, masculine in black and white overwhelmed her with enthusiasm and the desire to immortalize other people’s festivities. She photographed with her mobile phone, fragments from films, TV series, football games and concerts documenting ignited, frantic crowds as displayed on her television set. The photos freezing ecstatic, noisy moments, establish a mute dramatic deformity, highlighting the abandonment of control, dedication and exhilaration of a crowd amalgamated together.

In her choice to eternalize the multi-participant scenes in Tippex on black paper, Norman anchors the technique in a message that the individual’s internal world is shaped in the spirit of the group. The black page serves both as foundation and as the dark element of the image, while the Tippex provides its light component. Since the white Tippex is a transparent, easily evaporating liquid, she must work in layers. Each layer is a cluster of abstract stains clinging to each other or separating from each other, while the last layer, radiating in white crystallizes the scene. Finally, the stains take the shape of discernable stains: a groom carried on the crowd’s arms, a massive masculine bacchanalia, quire girls changing with their mouths wide open, orchestra players going crazy over their instruments, an elegant bride led to her chuppah, football fans screaming their heart out, etc.

In this phase, Norman polishes the scene, tightening the details through erasure. Facial features, clothes, objects, undergo an opposite process of delayering. Each individual in the crowd is endowed a personality and characterization through erasure. Thus, the spectacular technical sophistication enables Norman to build the group through the Tippex layers and decompose it into individuals by erasing them, just as the individual vanishes in the joyous group.