Nostalgia Sunday – The Old Train Station is New Again
Filed under: Art, General, History and Culture, Nostalgia Sunday, Picture of the Week, Travel, design
The Old Train Station in Neve Zedek is a recent and welcome addition to the city’s list of arts and recreation centers.
The site, built in 1890, was home to the Jaffa-Jerusalem railway, which traveled the distance between the two cities in 3 hours and 50 minutes.
The building was abandoned for many years but gained a new lease on life when the city decided to turn it into a cultural hotspot (for more, read the ISRAEL21c article).
The Station complex — also known as HaTahana — is fast becoming a home to photography exhibitions, such as POV – The Israel Photography Exhibition
This past Thursday night was the opening of Aftershock, a series about the Haiti earthquake’s aftermath by leading photojournalist Ziv Koren. The event was attended by Tel Aviv’s glitterati and while it’s always nice to get a a glimpse of our local beautiful people, there’s no mistaking the star power that is newly revived Station Complex. A definite must-see.
Foto Friday – Danny Yanai’s Israeli Walls
Filed under: A New Reality, Art, Crime, Environment, Foto Friday, General, History and Culture, Holidays, Israeliness, Picture of the Week, design
Israel is all about walls. Read the daily news headlines and you’ll come to believe that all Israeli walls are either Western or Separation. But Israel has other walls, more modest and colorful, less emotionally charged and politically burdensome. It’s these sorts of walls that photographer Danny Yanai has collected into into an online gallery entitled “Mainly Walls”.
Wall – Neve Tzedek Photo by Danny Yanai Israelpics.com
Yanai looks at walls both close up…
Lock – Peki’in Photo by Danny Yanai Israelpics.com
And at arm’s length…
Wall – Tel Aviv Photo by Danny Yanai Israelpics.com
There are walls that depict a slice of life…
Wall – Tel Aviv Mural by Rami Meiri. Photo by Danny Yanai Israelpics.com
A city’s extreme energy…
Wall – Tel Aviv Photo by Danny Yanai Israelpics.com
It’s history…
Wall – Tel Aviv Photo by Danny Yanai Israelpics.com
Even it’s seamier side… or as Yanai puts it: “Shit happens”.
Wall – Tel Aviv Photo by Danny Yanai Israelpics.com
Danny Yanai specializes in documentary and geographical photography. His work is on display at the HP Israel offices in Raanana, and he has exhibited in both solo and group shows. Yanai has an extensive online gallery on a range of subjects, most recently the Kumbh-Mela festival in India. But perhaps the most moving series — and the most heartbreaking — is Baby Sivan Fighting For Life that documents the short life of his daughter who died of cancer last year. Sivan was treated at Hadassah Medical Center’s Department of Bone Marrow Transplantation And Cancer Immunotherapy and donations in her memory are gratefully acknowledged by the family.
Light, Shadow and Color
Dan Diamant seems like a straight-laced, soft-spoken systems engineer. He is, in fact, a systems engineer. But he also has a completely different side of him that comes out in his fabulous photographs, which have slowly but surely been gaining an audience in a series of local exhibitions.
For this Budapest-born photographer, living in Israel for the last 20 years, photography is a form of self-expression, and an art form that he has been working on since he was 17, combining the worlds of science and art.
Here’s what he writes about his craft:
In 2007, an estimated 80 billion digital pictures were created in the United States alone. Sometimes I wonder if there is a reason in creating any more photographs. But photography, for me, is like life itself, it happens without a reason. I look around me and I just wonder. I see the extraordinary in the ordinary, the special in the common. Photography makes me stop in my everyday rush and take a deep breath. It is a wonderful world, here and now. My photographs are still and silent. They stop the time flowing. They let you enter into another frame of mind. To understand that each of us is extraordinary and special.
Dan’s subjects are nature, landscapes, gardens and everyday scenes. Some of his photographs are produced with the help of a special method resembling the original meaning of photography “drawing by the light.” He uses long exposition time and camera movements to create photographs that appear to be paintings but still represent reality. And I liked what he said here: “My photographs are ready a long time before they are taken, they were created in my imagination. I should only find them [sic] somewhere and to operate my camera at the decisive moment.”
Dan’s current photograph collection, “Light, Shadow and Color” is being exhibited at the Weizmann Center in Tel Aviv, 14 Weizmann Street, March 10-June 10, 2010.
Seeing Jerusalem upside down
When the Israel Museum unveils its extensive renovation work in July, museum-goers might be excused for thinking that things were done upside down.
That’s because one of the highlights of the $100 million makeover will be a reflective stainless-steel-surfaced sculpture by world famous artist Anish Kapoor.
According to Bloomberg news, like Kapoor’s “Cloud Gate” piece in Chicago, nicknamed “The Bean,” the 5-meter-high (16 feet) work will provide viewers with a distorted reflection of reality, in this case by inverting its surroundings on an hourglass-shaped mirror, placing the museum’s campus atop the sky.
Kapoor is a British citizen of Indian/Jewish descent who lived and studied in Israel for a few years during the 1970s.
Museum director James Snyder said that the sculpture is a tribute to Teddy Kollek, who served 28 years as the mayor of Israel’s capital, and will “reflect the essence of Teddy’s vision for the museum and its unique placement in the landscape of Jerusalem.”
The renovations at the museum – the most extensive since its opening in 1965 – will double the gallery space and make it more accessible for visitors who come to see such treasures as the Dead Sea Scrolls housed in the Shrine of the Book gallery.
According to Bloomberg, a new underground entrance walkway connects the museum’s buildings and will feature another new piece by artist Olafor Eliasson – a 15-meter-long and 2.4- meter-high wall of 300 individual paintings that comprise a complete spectrum of colors, entitled “Whenever the Rainbow Appears,” based on the story of Noah and the flood.
Snyder told Bloomberg that both Kapoor and the Danish-Icelandic Eliasson were “old friends” of the museum, which already has their works in its collection.
Once the museum unveils its momentous changes this summer, it will surely live up to its name as Israel’s national museum and become firmly ensconced as the one of the ‘must see’ tourist destinations in the country’s capital.
Foto Friday – Ron Shoshani’s Israel Eye Candy
Filed under: Art, Foto Friday, General, Israeliness, Picture of the Week, Profiles, Travel
The first thing people think when they see works by Ron Shoshani is that they aren’t really photographs. They are. But given our generation’s obsession with artifice, Shoshani takes care to ensure that his models – in his case, buildings, cities and even rocks – wear a healthy layer of makeup.
“Everything undergoes cosmetic treatment these days – models, TV presenters, even chefs dress up their food. We put makeup on everything. And that’s how I relate to photography. But the subject has to have a good basis. And when I take pictures, I look for and show the beauty.”
Using what he calls his ‘Secret Sauce’, Shoshani is able to make things appear as if they’ve been sprinkled with a dash of ‘Ever-So-Much-More-So’. “I always check the weather before I go out to photograph. Some things look better in daylight, others at night. I generally examine a site 2-3 times before the actual shoot. And I wait for the right day.” Working with a digital camera, he takes an initial set of photos after which the real work begins.
“The ‘Secret Sauce’ is to select the site, get it under the right weather conditions and then I start the maquillage. I can work on a frame for three days, I can work on it two weeks – post-processing or retouching – what people call Photoshopping, though I don’t necessarily use that.”
Israel becomes beautiful through Shoshani’s lens, particularly Tel Aviv, a city that can appear unlovely and unkempt to the uninitiated. “Every major city in the world has an image, like a poster, that shows it is an interesting cosmopolitan place. I wanted to create that sort of image, that makes people say ‘Wow, I want to go there!’”
Shoshani is also well-aware that his audience has both little viewing time and a limited attention span. “People view thousands of images a day and the amount of time people will spend on looking at a photo is maybe a quarter of second. So I try to create ‘eye candy’, one shot that will make you stop and think and see things not as they usually are. I try to make people look in wonderment. The photo of Tel Aviv skyline… you can look at it a long time.”
Shoshani’s work hangs in the lobbies and meeting rooms of Israeli companies. “They are proud of Israel and want to show that it’s a modern, technological and inspiring place.” Many more images are on view at his Facebook page and framing-quality prints may be ordered directly by writing to ronsho@gmail.com. (Shoshani says his prices are “comfortable”). Since posting his work on Facebook, Shoshani has received thank-yous from all over the world. “I got over 600 comments in three days. People were very emotional, writing things like ‘You should show this to the world’. I’m happy to. It’s not Zionism. I just think this country has an enormous variety of things to see.”
Art lovers rejoice
Almost since I moved to Ma’aleh Adumim around 16 years ago, work on the Moshe Castel Museum has been going in sporadically.
Touted as the city’s first art museum, it was going to put Ma’aleh Adumim on the map as far as having something cultural to offer visitors and tourists.
Castel, who died in 1991 at age 82, was a prolific painter whose works can be found hanging in the Knesset, Beit Hanassi and the Binyanei Hauma convention center.
After he died, his widow Bilhah moved from Tel Aviv to Ma’aleh Adumim. Evidently, she said that her husband had been inspired by the desert views and that he had expressed the wish that his paintings would one day hang in a museum overlooking the desert.
Well, finally, after a dozen years of stop and start building activity, the museum, housing 100 of Castel’s works, was officially opened at the end of the month.
It’s located on a residential street in the city and indeed, it boasts a magnificent view of the landscape of the region. Bilhah built an attached home for herself next to the museum and evidently integrally involved in many aspects of the site.
Details on visiting hours can be found here. The museum will be open to the public, groups and schools from this month and includes a cafe and gift shop. If visiting me wasn’t enough of a reason, here’s another to journey the five miles from Jerusalem to Ma’aleh Adumim.
Coke does it
Filed under: Art, Business, General, Israeliness, Pop Culture, design, tv
Could the world’s soft drink giant be ripping off Israeli chocolate milk maker Yotvata?
Very possibly. It seems that Coca-Cola had a Super Bowl commercial last Sunday titled “Sleepwalker,” and it showed a guy getting up in the middle of the night and sleepwalking to a fridge with bottles of Coke in it. Let me say that the two ads are extremely similar, from the music, plot to even the placement of the moon in the background.
A Coca-Cola spokeswoman told “Advertising Age” that any similarities to the Yotvata Dairy ad were coincidental.
“Advertising Age” quotes Coca-Cola spokeswoman Susan Stribling as saying, “When we created the Coca-Cola ‘Sleepwalker’ commercial, we and our agency were unaware of this other ad. Now that we’ve seen the ad, we think both commercials are equally entertaining. While the two share a few common elements, any similarities are coincidental and unintended.”
Until now, Yotvata hasn’t made any complaints about the Coke ad, and according to a Globes articles, Israeli analysts said that the “near-imitation” could be considered flattery by Israel’s marketing industry. Which, of course, is just hilarious. But not unheard of. I’ve experienced more than one instance of Israeli copycat flattery. I’ve had articles published in the New York Times that were then translated and copied, word for word, in the Israeli press. When it was about the secondary mortgage market in Israel, the article in Yediot Achronot read, “The New York Times says…” blah blah blah.
Nice workaround, no? But alas, I, the writer, never got any credit. Ditto for Yotvata.
Foto Friday – Painting Feb Red
Filed under: Art, Environment, Foto Friday, General, History and Culture
It’s February which means only six more weeks of winter, or maybe just six minutes more, given the freakish weekend hot spell. The JNF-KKL has declared February a month-long Festival Darom Adom, or Scarlet South Festival, in honor of the wild red anemones now dotting the fields all over the country, but particularly the northern Negev region where the local residents have organized walking tours and entertainment.
Photo by Hirshfield, courtesy JNF-KKL
The red anemone or calanit, is a favorite of Israelis and one of the success stories of Israel’s campaign to save its wildflowers.
Photo courtesy of Free Israel Photos
According to website Wild Flowers in Israel, an excellent resource, “the Hebrew name ‘kalanit’ is related to the Hebrew word for a bride ‘kala’, referring to its beauty,” and is mentioned the Talmud.
Photo courtesy of Flowers in Israel
Hebrew University’s Flora of Israel Online has plenty of scientific articles and lots more photos of this beloved flower.
Photo courtesy of Wildflowers in Israel
For those who can’t be here right now to see these red beauties at their peak, we present a few images to enjoy. And please visit the JNF-KKL website to download their amazing screensaver of Israel’s wildflowers.
Photo by Gil Soffer
Marquis de Sand
I know, I’ve been writing about my various nieces and nephews a lot, but hey, they’re doing interesting things in their twentysomething-year-old lives of seeking and searching their future selves.
Today’s pick is nephew Adin, brother of Noa of storm chasing and army officer fame. Adin is something of an iconoclast, a lover of anything geographical, a traveler, happily living at home post-army and recent Africa travels, trying to figure out what his future holds.
And during this in-between period of his life, he and his friend, Shai, have become expert sand castle builders. You see, even in the rainy Israeli winter you can expect warm days, days that are warm enough for hanging out on the beach, just a short 45-minute drive from Jerusalem. So Shai the university student and Adin the soon-to-be student, have been spending a lot of time honing their sand-building skills on the Israeli shores, building fantastical structures that pay attention to the smallest details.
We, the family, got wind of this the other night while watching a video of Adin’s trip to Africa last summer. Of course, being his aunt, uncle, parents and grandmother, our reaction was, “Adin, you could use these skills to become an architect or an engineer!” I wouldn’t say our comments fell on deaf ears, but Adin kept his counsel to himself.
In the meantime, I’m sharing some of his creations with you, dear readers, and if you have any ideas about where Adin can share his sandcastle creations, or what he could do with such skills, pass ‘em on. I’ll be discreet.
Nostalgia Sunday – Stitching in the Seventies
Filed under: Art, General, History and Culture, Israeliness, Life, Nostalgia Sunday, Pop Culture, design
Israelis are a crafty lot – and not in the way you think I mean. Israelis – particularly women – have always liked their handicrafts. These days, every neighborhood boasts a hobby store. Decoupage seems to be the most popular craft of the moment, putting pretty flowered napkins at a premium and shooting gilt paint prices through the roof.
But in every generation there will be needlepoint. Back in the Seventies, gobelin or tapestry needlework, was all the rage. There was far less television to watch and so an afternoon coffee could be quietly — or noisily — passed with good women friends, all of whom came equipped with a plastic bag filled with thick needles, French embroidery thread and canvas printed with the most horrifically sentimental romantic prints, also imported from France.
During our summer visits to see family, my Israeli mother refused to fall prey to the fad though she did help me as I (inspired by those books about young American frontier girls who walked 5 miles to school each day and then embroidered samplers by candlelight) made my own childhood attempts at needlework. We would sit around her cousin’s Rivka’s living room as Doda Dvora, Doda Tzila and cousin Rivkale all stitched away.
Doda Tzila — who was by far the most prolific — bestowed upon our family a version of the lady seen above left, in a heavy gold frame. I absolutely loved it and was quite disappointed to discover that it was a very common and popular print that hung in many an Israeli household, as were the fruit bowl and the cute kittens gobelins that we later received.
There was definitely an Eastern European aspect to the whole needlework thing as Israelis of Russian and Polish origin looked to all things French as the height of culture, while others hearkened back to the Austro-Hungarian Empire (it turns out that Hungary is also a big producer of horrifically sentimental romantic gobelin canvases). Despite the fact that everyone’s flats were furnished in Danish modern-style furniture, you never knew when a tapestry-covered chair or ottoman was suddenly going to turn up.
But it’s very likely that the local Bedouin and Palestinian embroidery was also a big influence. For instance, my Israeli mother was definitely an embroidery groupie, and spent hours and days scouring the Old City shuk for just the right black velvet embroidered jacket and long black dress. She also patronized the Bethlehem Arab Women’s Union (BAWU), which has been running an embroidery cooperative since 1968. More about BAWU and 16 other local artisan projects can be found at the Sunbula fair trade organization website.
There are some young Israeli designers who also resonate to the nostalgia vibe, such as bag designer Shiri Hyman of boutique Fabrica in Tel Aviv’s trendy Gan HaHashmal, whose gobelin-inspired pieces are sold in London boutiques as well as close to home.
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