Michal Chelbin is a jolly interesting photographer and not just a big perv...

A seismic shift and a fall into confusion happened as I was looking at the work of Israeli photographer Michal Chelbin.
As I'm not very cosmopolitan or that familiar with Israeli first names I started viewing the work thinking the photographer was a man. Debates started forming in my head same sort of questions and mild sicky taste I get in my mouth when I see or hear about the work of Jock Sturges. I then found out that Michal is a girls name and the work changed. Same images different gender photographer. Why in my mind has the work morphed so much? Does the sex of the photographer change the work? It certainly did for me. If that's the case for everyone, then do these photo's always have to be linked with the artist and can they not function on there own? Do we always need to know about the creator of a picture to know a picture?

As a post script I think that whether the photographer was male or female, a gallery in the UK in this day and age would struggle to show much of this work without a police raid, but that's a whole other debate................