Shifra’s direct experiences of the landscapes of towns and cities are but a starting point for photographs that come to be altered via digital technology. Beginning with her digital camera, snapping photos of architectural structures and social situations, she then filters these moments through computer software, creating surrealistic and sometimes startling images. This blend of photographic realism with digital alterations lends her work an almost predictive character — as though she were recreating scenes and juxtapositions of phenomena which are only dimly suggested by actual environments.

Her intuition for what is most foreboding in a landscape, city street, or place of dwelling darkly crystallizes in the photograph The Haunted House. Here, a more of less conventionally elegant house has been ripped from any familiar context where it might appear warm and inviting. Instead, it seems collaged to an arid, Mars-like desert, where the only signs of life are occasional weeds and winged creatures which seem to circle the house. The anxiety-inducing character of the house’s facade feels uncomfortably close despite all suggestions of distance.