In the documentary photos, three girls are watching TV in their parents' double bed. Whether sitting, lying down, or jumping, their gaze is concentrated on a specific, high, invisible point: the TV itself is always out of frame. Like the absent screen, the photographer is also a present-absentee. Only we see him seeing them watching something else.

By removing the TV as an object from the photograph, the raw gaze becomes the focal point: not just the absorbed viewing of the unseen screen but also the surreptitious glance of the photographer and the exhibition visitor, observing the girls unaware of their documentation. What holds more truth, more cultural significance, more value? Watching TV, observing the girls, or viewing the exhibition? Which gaze do we find acceptable, and which do we reject? The camera, captivated by the gaze, exposes the irony embedded in our hierarchy of permissions.

"Can I watch telly?" – the request, in its partial, clumsy, habitual phrasing, is a conditional plea, a reaction to the parents' conditional denial of TV. In contrast, the photographer identifies with the aesthetic need, unconquerable and therefore immoral, of the child's gaze. Isn't the panorama offered by the TV at least as wonderful as the photographic subjects that now capture our gaze?

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Written by Tal Frenkel Alroy, Nov 2013 for the Tova Osman Art Gallery, Tel Aviv.