ABOUT THE WORKS
COLOUR WORKS
(from 2009)
The intersection of ideology and photography was central to the creation of a sense of place in pre-state Israel. In the early 20th century, pioneers in settlements and kibbutzim used photography not only to capture historic moments but to disseminate ideology, turning the photograph into a tool for asserting identity. To photograph the new was part of the making of a place.
Since 2009, I have been photographing in Israel and the West Bank with an 8x10 plate camera. The decision to place myself within the landscape and to document its shifting grounds allowed me to witness the action of the state in constructing spaces, which allowed me to navigate my own relationship to the conflict and the hidden histories of the occupation. The interplay of identity and the invisible forces shaping and constantly transforming the environment became the main them of the works as I became aware that the landscapes and what becomes the public sphere is produced with visible political interventions and modifications. The experience of documenting a reality which constantly appears as incomplete became a space that set the foundation of my interest in photography and allowed me to think of photography as something that reflects on invisible futures as much as the past and present.
The images reveal fractured landscapes caught between civilian and military realms, capturing the violence inflicted on the land where natural elements and human intervention collide. Ultimately, this work is an exploration of the incompleteness that so often defines this landscape. Through these images, I probe the tension in a place where nothing is fully formed—where the notion of ‘becoming’ becomes apparent. The land, both physically and metaphorically, remains incomplete, suspended in a state of flux.
Each photograph operates in a space between fact and fiction, reality and its alternate version. By deliberately observing "outside the event," I capture moments of latent transformation—when the land reveals itself, its pulse still malleable, and its reality still in flux. These images suggest the emergence of a mundane reality, hinting at what might have been and what could be.
What constitutes these photographs is not a romanticised vision of the landscape but a fragmented reality. These are not monumental landscapes but offerings of a gaze into a world on the brink of becoming—raw and brutal. The language of incompleteness reflects not only the land itself but also our cognition of images. This is encapsulated in the work Headless Lighting Poles (2010), where a street is shown in its unfinished state, still under construction, displaying the subjects in a form that would otherwise be erased from our consciousness, and the significance od making of a place would not be apparent (it world just be a photograph of a place or a street). But when the street is seen in its incompleteness, when the act of making of a place becomes visible, we are encourage to ascribe meaning to it and simultaneously to question it.
MARBLE WALL [i], GENERAL ASSEMBLY HALL, UNITED NATIONS HEADQUARTERS
(2017)
Marble Wall [i] was photographed with an 8x10 plate camera at the General Assembly Hall of the United Nations Headquarters in New York. The work focuses on the well known backdrop that frames the decision-makers and leaders of the political world—an intersection of global political narratives and a modernist object deliberately designed to be photographed.
The photograph reveals the stage as a sculptural entity when viewed diagonally, highlighting the formal and material qualities of the marble. The large dimensions of the print allow viewers to immerse themselves in the texture and detail of the surface, uncovering the intricate interplay between the marble’s formal qualities and its almost sculptural presence within this significant space.
SIREN
(2009-2024)
This project which began in 2009 explores the formation of collective identity and memory around the siren and the landscapes it form. The photographs were made with an 8x10 camera on highways during annual memorial days and in the moment of siren. The siren holds a multiple of meanings in Israeli society - It serves as a means of protection, signalling when shelter in necessary from an immediate threat. Yet, the same sound of siren also marks memorial days in Israel, and thus connecting the notion of threat with memory, ideology, and the intersection of past and present. In these images, the notion of control becomes evident on multiple levels, when a central authority (the state / "the big other") presses a button, causing all citizens to quite literally stand still, making apparent the triangular power dynamic between landscape, state, and citizen. The choice of highways as the setting is significant—they represent spaces of high speed, yet during the siren, the world slows down, pausing in a moment that is ultimately captured as an image. The presence of people in these photographs is also crucial, as they become inextricable parts of the project, unable to escape their role in this shared photographic experience.
SANCTUARY
(2010 - 2020)
Sanctuary is a photographic series captured with an 8x10 plate camera starting in 2010, documenting a pivotal moment in the evolution of residential architecture in Israel. This series captures the emergence of a new architectural language—a generation of "architectureless" residential buildings, characterized by their efficiency-driven, profit-oriented design, produced through computer 3D simulation software. These structures, which proliferated rapidly like mushrooms after rain, redefine our understanding of what constitutes a home.
The photographs confront the viewer with the stark facades of these buildings, offering no external space to intervene or contextualize the scene. By focusing on the surfaces, the images emphasise the disconnection between the idealized digital simulations and the actual physical appearance of these buildings. The use of a large-format analog camera allows for the revelation of fragility in the details and the materiality of a fractured reality.
This series brings forth the politics of Israel on two interconnected levels: the economy of digital space and its translation into physical reality, and the military-industrial undertones evident in the ubiquitous ventilation panels, which mark the presence of bomb shelters in each apartment. The works engage in a dialogue between the political and the abstract. On one hand, these alienated structures speak to a language of defense and the industrial materiality in housing production. On the other hand, the surface of the photograph invites deeper observation and contemplation of the formal qualities rendered in each image.
A CLOUD OF DUST
(2011 / 2018)
A Cloud of Dust is a wall installation consisting of four panels, each contributing to a unified composition that explores the interplay between emptying and filling the image. The work originates from a photograph taken with an 8x10 plate camera outside a quarry along the Green Line—an invisible border between Israel and the West Bank. The trucks transporting building materials stir up dust, which, while not apparent, subtly signifies the presence of this invisible border.
The dust creates a backdrop that obscures the distant details of the landscape, emptying the image of clarity and context. This work also draws inspiration from Albrecht Dürer’s watercolor, The Great Piece of Turf (1503), reflecting on the notion of ‘a study of nature.’ It highlights the challenges of conducting such studies in a conflict-ridden environment where the natural landscape is continually disrupted.
By breaking the image into four panels, the installation introduces a dynamic movement and composition within the exhibition space, reimagining the way the dust interacts with the natural environment. The dust functions as both a filter and a backdrop, creating a "natural studio" effect that emphasizes the tension between nature and the constructed environment.
CHAMBER
(2011)
Chamber is a series of five large-scale colour works, photographed with an 8x10 plate camera. The images delves into the intricate details of the land exposed during the construction and expansion of a settlement in the West Bank, capturing the precise moment when the earth is forcefully opened, resulting in a raw self expression of the ground.
The title, suggests an enclosed space, yet these photographs are taken in the vastness of the natural environment, outdoors under the soft caress of natural light—situating them firmly within the realm of field or outdoor photography. These images were made moments after what was once a mountain was disrupted, highlighting the materiality of the earth and the bleeding strata of the mountains, revealed in the instant when the inside becomes outside, and the fractured landscape is laid bare.
In Land Study No. 04, the lines etched into the ground by machinery inadvertently form patterns that echo the artistic expressions of prehistoric times, evoking a return to minimalistic forms of expression. The composition of these works is carefully crafted to envelop the viewer, immersing them in the detailed textures and rawness of the exposed land.
The work also serve as a portrayal of how the act of expansion is materialised - a visual representation of what this process of expansion looks like. The works contemplate on the implications of human political interventions with nature, reflecting on the relationship between human intervention in the land, history and politics.
STRATUM
(2014 - 2016)
Stratum is a series of 30 silver-gelatin prints, made with large-format cameras and printed in the darkroom, documenting the details of the late 18th-century facades of the Bank of England, designed by the renowned British architect Sir John Soane (1753–1837). The project followed Joseph Michael Gandy's 1830 watercolor drawing titled A Bird’s-eye View of the Bank of England. Although often referred to as 'The Bank in ruins,' the drawing was commissioned by Soane as a cutaway representation, resulting in an ambiguous image that simultaneously suggests both the construction and decay of the building.
The photographs trace the stages of sandblasting on the building’s surface—an act of cleaning and peeling away the layers of architecture as an institutional act of representation.
The series plays with the concept of indexicality, as multiple versions of the facades—before, during, and after cleaning—capture both the reality of the building anf its subtle variations and the ontological challenges of photography. The act of erasure, whether through sandblasting or photographic processing, can manifest as lighter or darker prints, blurring the line between presence and absence and challenging the viewer’s perception of reality.
The work activates a dialogue between architecture, representation, and time. The photographic process, as in architecture, is a process of erosion and loss is central to its being—whether through the chemical erosion of silver halide particles in analog photography or the physical erosion of the building’s surface through weathering (and in this exampe sandblasting and cleaning). These multiple acts of erasure within the series expose the medium of photography as inherently occupied with "cleaning" reality in the act of representing it, embodying the fragile connection between the material world and its depiction.
PERVERSE FOREGROUNDS
(2019-2023)
“the difficulty of getting a view satisfactorily in the camera: foregrounds are especially perverse; distance too near or too far; the falling away of the ground; the intervention of some brick wall or other common object … what pictures we would make if we could command our point of views”. Francis Frith, 1859.
When exploring the relationship between landscape and imagery, it's essential to recognize that landscapes are first constituted in consciousness. Freud suggested that conscious thoughts and feelings transfer into the unconscious, a process he likened to a mystical writing pad. This pad's surface can be erased and reused repeatedly, yet subtle imperfections and traces of previous activity remain, unnoticed by the user. Freud uses this analogy to illustrate how our unconscious retains remnants of past experiences, shaping our memory, thoughts, and perception.
In the work Perverse Foregrounds, a series of black-and-white photographs using large-format cameras, I study these themes in the Jordan Valley, in the northern West Bank. Here, a dormant quarry disrupts the landscape, a site where heavy trucks, decades ago, removed and transported the earth to build in Israel. The trucks left behind invisible, latent impressions on the land, while the turf, boulders, and patterned growth reveal the quarry's activities from decades past.
These photographs capture the tension between what is visible and what remains hidden, between the present and the traces of the past, emphasizing how landscapes—and our perceptions of them—are shaped by power, memory, and the unconscious and nature’s ability to act forensically.