The abused landscape: the works of young Israeli photographers.

For the last few years Kremer, a graduate of the Camera Obscura School of Art in Tel Aviv, has devoted himself to the project "Infected Landscapes" (1999-present). This is a continuous and ongoing examination of the presence of the army in the Israeli landscape and a conscious follow-up of the works by Kuper and Ophir. In some of his landscape photographs he uses the device, common in the 1990s, of blocking the view, and his work is preoccupied with barrier blocks and the Disengagement Wall. His visual language, though, is entirely different, as is evident from his work Training Targets in the Big Rivers National Park (2007). (17) This work depicts the mutilated remains of a jet fighter aircraft standing in the middle of a vast desert landscape, littered with thousands of broken and twisted pieces of metal and spent shells. The open composition, the central protagonist pushed to the middle distance, and the inclusion of the cloudy skies of dusk render it a romantic impression. This picture, like most of Kremer's landscapes, is aesthetic and heroic, and therefore presents an apparent contradiction.

Ben Shalom, a graduate of the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design in Jerusalem, solely photographed the landscape of the Golan Heights in the project titled "Battlefield" (2006-present). (18) This territory in the northern part of Israel was captured from the Syrians during the 1967 war. Since then, and although settled and recognized as part of Israel by the government, it has hardly been touched and serves as a training area and firing zone for the army. The landscape is broken by minefields, tank shelters, barbed wire, and ruined villages. In winter, when a lush green carpet covers the minefields and fenced-off areas, it becomes one of the most beautiful and untouched natural regions in the country. The inherent contradiction is reflected in the photographs of Ben Shalom. Her picture of an anti-tank ditch filled with water is a strong example of this dichotomy; it is simultaneously pastoral and disturbing. The huge ditch is a constant reminder of the threat of war, a barrier interposed between the traveler and nature, and a deep scar in the landscape. Ben Shalom's seemingly naive photographs depict the Golan Heights as they are: a vast terrain of anomaly.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Barak, another a graduate of the Camera Obscura School of Art, touches upon environmental issues in two of his projects. (19) In "Getaways" (2003), he examines the difficulty Israelis have finding a getaway in an almost completely urbanized country by trying to capture and isolate such getaways with the camera frame. In "Earthworks" (2005), he concentrates on quarries. As mentioned earlier, the quarry was a heroic site, and for years Israelis were not willing to admit that quarries are also environmental disasters. Barak's images speak of the expropriation of the soil and touches on the problematic issue that for many years contractors have been disfiguring the landscape irreparably and robbing natural resources of soil and sand in their haste to save on costs and meet deadlines. In his photographs one encounters carefully planned compositions of what look like breathtaking Alpine landscapes. Only a second glance reveals, if at all, that we are actually seeing artificial cliffs blocking the view. Other pictures are more direct as Barak points the camera downward into the quarry's depth to create an inferno-like image.

In his famous poem "Morning Song" (1934), the Hebrew poet Nathan Alterman vowed in the name of the pioneers to his beloved homeland: "We shall clothe you in garb of concrete and cement." Then, this was a typical zealous call by a devout utopist, but in recent years it has become a terrifying reality. The presence of concrete in the Israeli landscape, as we saw above, is very central. It is also central in the work of Assaf Evron, a self-taught photographer working for the Tel Aviv weekly Ha'ir who has exhibited his work at various art venues. (20) Evron's photograph Mountain, Hut and Cable (2006) is a highly aesthetic photograph based on a simple composition. The mountain is covered with cement. Evron challenges us by getting close to his subject, thereby repeating the practice of blocking the view. The viewer is confronted with a brutal method meant to prevent landslides, but one that turns Alterman's vision into gruesome reality. The hut at the top of the composition serves as a reminder of transience, a subject that also finds an expression in a series of photographs Evron dedicated to container houses.

Many contemporary Israeli landscape photographs concentrate on paths and dirt roads crossing the landscape. One of Kremer's photographs depicts a panoramic view of a firing zone and national park crisscrossed with endless dirt roads. A careful examination of the picture reveals numerous four-wheel-drive vehicles owned by the Israeli bourgeoisies charging across the landscape on the weekend when these territories are opened temporarily by the army.

In a similar vein, Ickowicz, a graduate of the Musrara School of Photography in Jerusalem, examines a particular dirt path crossing a construction-waste dumping site through which people wearily make their way home, dragging their shopping trolleys through the soft sand, in his series "Load" (2006). (21) Other images present apocalyptic landscapes of winding dirt roads thrusting into the midst of a scorched landscape, burnt due to natural causes or as the result of army maneuvers and warfare. These photographs maintain the "Routes of Wandering" theme, a central and enduring issue in Israeli art. (22) Ickowicz concentrates on settlement, displacement, and estrangement. (23) Many of his photographs, which he calls cultural landscapes, depict figures standing in a landscape. A large number of these photographs from the series "Settlement" (2003-2006) reveal a sense of fierce alienation between the essentially urban Jewish settlers and the land they inhabit. (24)

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Many of Ickowicz's photographs, as well as those by other members of this group, depict ruins. Kremer examines ruined houses in firing zones and in the Golan Heights, and devotes a series of photographs to destroyed or deserted houses seen through a window, in which the dilapidated walls and the peeling paint serve as a frame for the landscapes. The depiction of ruins has become a widespread and significant feature in recent years as it reflects a society troubled by constant fear of persecution, evacuation, and forced immigration. Ickowicz's photograph of an Israeli flag on top of a demolished house in an evacuated settlement summarizes this sentiment.

The new landscape photographers clearly follow in the footsteps of the last generation, particularly in the use of the blocked view as a critical means, yet they have created a new language. They do not depict the Israeli landscape with awe, as did photographers before the 1970s, nor are their photographs as blunt and harsh as those made in the 1990s. Photographers of the 1990s needed to make the point of doing away with the admiring tone. Now that this has been realized, photographers are at liberty to pay more attention to aesthetic values.

The association that some authors find with the Israeli occupation, which "aims to control and reshape" the landscape, (25) is true, but only to a certain extent. The tragedy of the situation in the Middle East, as demonstrated by these photographers, has deeper roots. It rests on the inability of Israelis to change their skin and become attached to the territory, and this is partly why many voices in Israel and abroad speak of post-Zionism.

JOCHAI ROSEN is a lecturer in the department of art history at the University of Haifa in Haifa, Israel.