AN ALBUM FROM THE SOUTH:
Israeli Photographers Documenting October 7
Participating Artists: Doron Adar, Or Adar, Galit Aloni, Prof. Dana Arieli, Ittai Bar- Joseph, Gilad Bar Shalev, Rina Castelnuovo, Yuval Chen, Amir Goldstein, Nadav Goren, Amnon Gutman, Batia Holin, Roi Kuper, Miki Kratsman, Danny Lerner, Alex Levac, Lavi Lipshitz ז״ל, Adi Nes, Tsafrir Nir, Ruti Noy, Gilad Ophir, Yarnin Peled, David Peretz, Irit Rubinger Leron, Avi Sabag-Sharvit, Hadar Saifan, Sholi Strauss, Yogev Vanounou, Kobi Wolf, Sharon Ya‘ari, Nurit Yarden
Project Founder: Prof. Dana Arieli
Curator: Dr. Rotem Rozental
Banner image: Miki Kratsman, In Aunt Ophelia’s Neighborhood, 2023
On October 20, 2023, famed scholar and photographer Dana Arieli began sharing daily posts on Facebook, each of a different photographer whose work is embedded in and responds to the Western Negev area in Israel. The posts, all in Hebrew, navigated historical images of the region from the 1950s, contemporary experimental projects that predate October 7, and documentation of life in the area during and after the attack. There were families in safe rooms, soldiers taking a break, nature and interior, conflicts and joy.
Arieli, a researcher of memory culture and cultural manifestations of trauma, continued posting for over one-hundred days, processing very personal grief–having lost her friend, Gideon Pauker of Kibbutz Nir Oz–and the sense of the very collective, national collapse around her. Combining images with expanded narratives about the work and the photographer, she grouped 107 of them under the name אלבום דרום or Albom Darom: Israeli Photographers in Tribute to the People of the Western Negev. The album now exists as Facebook diary, in book form alongside essays (Yedioth Ahronot Publishing, 2024) and in this exhibition. The name echoes the commemorative albums of local wars; books that are inseparable from Israel’s visual culture. Here, the album seeks to offer not commemoration, but a shared space for healing.
Some of the participating photographers are world renowned, others are amateurs. They are soldiers, family members, kibbutzniks, visitors, locals, artists. They differ in their approach and creative practice. Yet they all connect at the moment the camera tries to capture and make sense of the world as it lays in front of it, to catalogue the visual world and one’s place within it.
The selections shown here attempt to provide a glimpse of life in that area—not just in the aftermath of the attack, but throughout Israel’s life as a nation. It’s heartbreaking to look at image taken October 6, as it is looking at images from the 1980s. They all speak to a world now gone. And yet, there’s hope. There are moments of camaraderie, of human connection and possibility, all play out in images.
As we enter the High Holy Days, and the unbearable first anniversary of the attack nears, this panoramic view does not only ask to remind of us of what had been, but to consider what could be. In that sense, this project both bears witness and seeks to chart a potential path toward a future, one that is informed by connection and community, by remembering everything that brings us together and overcome what can tear us apart.
Provided by a generous grant contribution from the USCJ.
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Public Programs:
- September 28, 6:30 PM, opening reception and talk with Rabbi Erez Sherman and Dr. Rotem Rozental
- Date TBA, virtual program with Rabbi Erez Sherman Prof. Dana Arieli and Dr. Rotem Rozental and participating artists
