Some of the silliest examples: Talitakumi in front of Jerusalem’s HaMashbir LeZarchan, a strangely out of place wall-and-clock structure intended to replicate the front of a girl’s school that was razed to make room for the department store. The gate leading to Gymnasia Herzliya in Tel Aviv was thrown up by sentimental, well-meaning people in recognition of the original structure, demolished to make way for the Kolbo Shalom. And does anybody know that the Gan HaIr mall and residential complex was named for the municipal zoological garden that once stood there?

The most unsung of all are the movie houses, most of them shuttered for decades, fall deeper and deeper into disrepair until they are destroyed to make room for malls, tall buildings and parking lots. No one remembers Tel Aviv’s majestic Mugrabi Cinema or Jerusalem’s historic Edison.

Nonetheless, a small victory was achieved a little over a week ago when high-rise developers were forced to change a plan to tear down Bay Yam’s historic Savion Cinema. The victory belongs to a local activist group of Bat Yam residents, artists and the Society for Preservation of Israel Heritage Sites who objected to the demolition and proposed a synthesis of old and new structures.

In its heyday, Bat Yam boasted six movie houses. The Savion Cinema was built in 1957 and — in line with the global trend – closed in the 1980s. “However it remained an architectural icon because of its facade which was characterized by a weave of concrete block units,” states The Marker.

Icon or not, the building was in bad shape. Its most recent tenant: a dollar store in what was once the movie-house’s lobby.

According to The Marker, the design for a 25-story tower by architect Ilan Pivko, will be modified in accordance with preservation plan for the building. The building — a luxury residence and prestigious office space — is a flagship project for the Bat Yam municipality which wants to develop the run-down neighborhoods adjacent to Jaffa. The preservation plan calls for the street-facing facade to remain intact.

One look at Pivko’s work and its clear that adapting his design to the new guidelines goes against his post-modernist grain. He does not favor keeping the facade as is and suggests a modular solution instead. “One can reconstruct, dismantle or in some other way create an interior element within the structure.” How Pivko handles this challenge remains to be seen… he has done this sort of thing before… but if he wanted to do it with the Savion, he would have worked it into the original design…

Hmmm… one gets the feeling that this issue isn’t over just yet.

Whether or not the Savion Cinema facade remains on the street level or whether, in the end, Pivko’s lobby will simply feature a bold construction of recycled concrete filigree, the real significance of the decision is a precedent set in curbing real estate developers’ ability to destroy old structures without recognizing their historic value. Hopefully, that means recognition not just in the form of an incidental plaque, statue or clock, but as part of the planning, putting real thought into paying homage to what came before.

The Savion Cinema photos were taken by architect Sharon Raz who is a one-man documentary powerhouse with a particular interest in Israel’s old cinemas. See his Disappearing Architecture and Disappearing Cinemas sites as well as his Natush blog for more photos and information.

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The name takes the hackneyed shopping channel phrase mutzar ha-yom, “product of the day”, and replaces it with the word ayom, meaning “horrible”. And indeed, many of the products are in fact, delightfully dreadful examples of visual wordplay.

Some of the ideas are universal in nature — others are unmistakably Israeli, for example, this toy soldier armed with mother’s cooking…

Water concentrate, as opposed to the ubiquitous sugary red mitz petel, so ingrained in the Israeli child’s psyche — and the Israeli child’s teeth!

A reversed three-fer electric adaptor…

A floor squeegee that actually gets into corners…

And my personal favorite, the real and original dubon coat.

Menkes also runs a Mutzar Ayom Facebook page in which followers are invited to comment on recent postings and share their own imaginary product ideas. Who knows, some might even make it into production — after all, if the Crembox can be an actual product fulfilling an actual need, then anything’s possible.

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But for most of the summer, it looked like this…
Photo: Wikimedia Commons

Sadly, it still does look like that in Jerusalem’s Sacher Garden, where the truly homeless continue to reside in the cold and wet. The next chapter in the Social Justice movement remains to be written in 2012.

Some chapters were closed in 2011, which marked the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the homecoming and start of a brand new life for Gilad Shalit after over five years of imprisonment by Hamas.
Photo: IDF Spokesman via Wikimedia Commons

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Minister of Defense Ehud Barak were present at Shalit’s release — so much so that they were accused of being publicity hounds (does no one know anything about politicians?) — and Netanyahu’s image was used to create the first Israeli photo meme.

There were other beginnings as well. A rare sand cat was born at the Ramat Gan Safari…
Photo: Tibor-Jager

Jerusalem held its first marathon and got its first Light Railway…
Photo: Wikimedia Commons

The Dead Sea was not selected as one of the New 7 Natural Wonders of the World…

Photo: New7Wonders

On the other hand, the nomination campaign may have served to draw public attention to the salt lake’s plight — just this week, Israel Corporation subsidiary Israel Chemicals reached an agreement with the Ministry of Finance on terms for the Dead Sea’s rehabilitation from excessive salt harvesting. It’ll be interesting to see if this promise, along with many others made in 2011, will be fulfilled in 2012. Here’s to that, and to a hopeful and happy New Year!

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Panoramic photography, states Wikipedia, “is a technique of photography, using specialized equipment or software, that captures images with elongated fields of view. It is sometimes known as wide format photography.” (Click here for more about the methods used to create 360 images). Panoramic photo images have been around since the mid 1800s; this one of Jerusalem was taken in the early 20th century.

Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

As with everything else photographic, clearly, the technology has evolved. Take, for example, this amazing 360 degree panoramic photo of the Galilee.

Tel Yodfat, Galilee, Israel in Israel

The Church of All Nations is located on Mount of Olives in Jerusalem, next to the Garden of Gethsemane. Click on this photo — the link will take you to a panoramic view of the Church, the Garden and the walls of the Old City, courtesy of 3D Israel.

Israeli company Simply Live has developed a highly technologically advanced 360 degree video camera (only last week presented at the Bezeq Expo innovation showcase). Click on this photo of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre — the link takes you to their site where you can view an interactive video that allows you to enter and move through the Church interior.

A fascinating if politically charged panoramic view of Israel’s coastline as viewed from the West Bank is available at MyIsrael.com. The site owners are very blunt about the purpose of the wide-angle shot: they wish to show how vulnerable Israel would be to an attack were pre-1967 borders to be reinstated. It takes only one look to see why the situation here is complicated.

Even on its own, the image is complex: a very wide-angle view (MyIsrael.com say it is the largest publicly available) with interactive controls so that viewers can zoom in on highly detailed close ups. Photographer Yaal Herman provides several pages of explanation on how the photo (really hundreds of photos stitched together) was accomplished. Click on this thumbnail to see the full version.

Whatever the political future holds, we can still hope for stability, quiet and — dare I say it? — peace. A few weeks ago, I was in Bethlehem once again for the annual Papal Peace Run. Instead of a highly secured, quick in-and-out, I would like to be able to return one day at my leisure to visit the Church of the Nativity. Till then, I will visit this way — and invite you to do so, too. Happy holidays to all.

Church Nativity Bethlehem in Israel

Grotto of the Nativity – Church of the Nativity, Betlehem in Israel

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Anaglyph images provide a stereoscopic effect when viewed through glasses with two different colored lenses. The technology is enjoying a 21st century comeback due to Photoshop and other programs that allow people to easily create anaglyph images and post them online. So, get your red and cyan spectacles on! It’s time to view the sights and sounds of the Holy Land in three dimensions!

There’s been a resurgence in anaglyph movies as well. Production company Highlight Films provides a range of services to facilitate and manage TV, film and video productions, including researchers, production fixers, camera crews, HD cameras and equipment, location scouting, personnel and, of course, 3D film and video. Enjoy.

3D HD landscapes of Israel

3D Dead Sea 7 Wonders

3D Jerusalem

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Elbling’s work combines photography and computer digital processing. “I photograph raw material, then deconstruct and re-organize it on the computer,” she writes. “The process is comprised of several stages and operates in layers, while keeping the logic of the photographic order intact.

Untitled Photo by Liat Elbling

“The main themes in my work relate to photography as a representation of reality and to the relationship between photography and memory. I am fascinated by the manner in which photography is considered reliable testimony and used to mediate reality.”

(A) Part #50888970 Photo by Liat Elbling

“My work focuses on uncovering scenes and images that posses day-to-day familiarity but at the same time, it’s seems like they have been exaggerated or have lost the ability to function.”

Azoulay, who received her MFA from the Bezalel Art Academy last year, stated, “I start with an attempt to create a place and only then to document it in a photograph; to detach objects from their usual adjectives, to annul the common familiar meaning they hold and rearrange them into a different and coherent reality.”

A space for a man with a chair Photo by Ilit Azoulay

About Azoulay’s work, Goren writes: “Like an archaeological study that sorts and catalogues findings from the past, she collects remnants of the present and applies onto them a clear regularity of gaze and photographic conditions, and assembles a continuous pictorial sequence devoid of thematic meaning.”

Room #8, 2011 (detail) Photo by Ilit Azoulay

“The space achieved in the final photograph subverts the spatial logic of sensual vision, its photographic representation and their (the gaze’s as well as the photograph’s) interpretation through the human brain, i.e. with consciousness tools.”

Tunnel Photo by Ilit Azoulay

The Tel Aviv Museum of Art – Leon and Michaela Constantiner Photography Award for an Israeli Artist was founded in 1999. Award recipients include Pesi Girsch (1999); Dalia Amotz, Simcha Shirman, Ori Gersht (2000); Barry Frydlender, Hanna Sahar (2001); Lee Yanor, Galia Gur-Zeev (2002); Adi Nes (2003); Reli Avrahami (2004); Leora Laor, Igael Shemtov, Pavel Wolberg (2005); Roi Kuper (2006); Michal Chelbin (2007); Yanai Toister (2008); Naomi Leshem (2009). In addition to the Prize, the photographers’ works are entered into the Museum collection.

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Each year, the Valley hosts thousands of Common Cranes, Pelicans, Ducks, Waders and Passerines. Over 300 species are seen here annually including very rare European birds of prey. (A full checklist of birds migrating through the Hula Valley is available here).

According to the event organizers, KKL Agamon-Hula Park and Hula Nature Reserve, “We believe it is time to spotlight the region as the world class birding destination that it is, and the way to do so is through a large scale birdwatching event.” The result: the Hula Valley Bird Festival, a one week event running from November 24th to 27th offered birding tours, art exhibition, photography seminars, a large scale scientific conference and much more.

“Much more” includes last night’s concert by seven time Grammy award winning musician Paul Winter, performing a new bird migration-inspired piece, Flyways, which takes inspiration from ethnic music from the countries along the migration route — Africa, the Middle East and Europe — embellished with bird songs and calls.

The scientific conference focused on various aspects of stopover site conservation such as habitat protection, migration ecology, climate change, regional cooperation and site networks, national and international policy and programming, public awareness and eco-tourism.

The photography seminar, “Cranes, Kingfishers and more in the Hula Valley”, led by renowned photographer Thomas Krumenacker and other leading nature photographers, focused on the Valley’s most important wintering species, the Common Crane.

“The Hula Valley in winter is probably among the best places in the world to get up close and personal with these beautiful birds.”

“Besides the Cranes we will spend time with some of the valleys other beautiful species like three different species of Kingfishers, Pelicans, wintering raptors and more.”

Berlin-based Krumenacker has been to Israel many times to photograph the Hula Valley. More photos can be viewed and purchased from his website.

All images are copyrighted by Thomas Krumenacker and come courtesy of the Hula Valley International Bird Festival website.

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The Herta and Paul Amir Building is being touted as Israel’s answer to the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain. Its proponents hope that Tel Aviv will be touched by the magical “Bilbao Effect” in which the building itself becomes a tourist destination. Interestingly, its architect, Preston Scott Cohen, calls the new wing, “An antidote to the Bilbao phenomenon, the new building of the Tel Aviv Museum of Art represents a new direction: an interiorized and socialized space of spectacle, as opposed to the ’90s model of an exterior sculptural object displayed to the city.”

Spectacle or sculptural, the 195,000 square foot new wing is an exciting break with the past. Built to house the museums’s ever-expanding collection contemporary art, the structure centers around a monumental sculpture, the Lightfall, that reaches toward a skylight which sends natural light into the building’s interior. Ramps and stairs spiraling down around the Lightfall provide access to the galleries, art library, center for Architecture and Design, 400-seat auditorium and ancillary spaces.

Although Cohen takes inspiration from the White City’s Bauhaus Modernism, it’s a far cry from the old building, designed in the Brutalist style by architects Dan Eytan and the late Yitzhak Yashar, which was completed in 1971, and for which Eytan and Yashar won the Rechter Prize of Architecture.

And it’s an every farther cry from the first Tel Aviv Museum on Rothschild Boulevard, the historic Modernist building that was home to Meir Dizengoff, the first mayor of Tel Aviv, and the site where the State of Israel was declared.

Throughout its various incarnations, however, the spirit of the museum belongs to artist Marc Chagall.

According to a lovely essay on the American Friends of the Tel Aviv Museum website, “Mayor Dizengoff had a vision of Tel Aviv becoming a great commercial and cultural center. After building houses, a movie theater, hospital, synagogue and slaughterhouse, bath houses and other structures the Mayor began to feel the need to foster beauty—which meant art and an art museum.

“Dizengoff visited Paris in 1930, met Chagall and asked his help in establishing a museum. The… artist readily accepted. In a letter to Dizengoff after meeting him in Paris and prior to his first visit to Israel, Chagall stated: “‘. . . we are prepared to help you. I am happy that finally a Jew has emerged who wants to establish a Jewish museum, and who understands how indispensable it is (not only as a useful element of tourism) . . . in the major centers of Europe and America, societies of friends of the Jewish museum should be established . . . to collect money and artistic material fit for a museum.’

“Chagall visited Tel Aviv a year later. Tel Aviv had a population of 50,000 people and three repertory theaters. Mayor Dizengoff had donated his home as the future Tel Aviv Museum of Art. The Mayor met Chagall, his wife and daughter at the head of the city’s fire brigade. Horse races on the seashore were organized in Chagall’s honor.

“At a reception in Tel Aviv Chagall said “I am amazed how a handful of people, surrounded by hatred, rather than love, builds and creates a new land. I am jealous of your idealism, and I wish you from the bottom of my heart to continue what you started. And for me I wish to come and wallow among you, and maybe I shall be able as an artist to do something for your future Jewish museum as well . . .”

“Chagall advised Mayor Dizengoff as to what works should be included in the Museum’s collection. Chagall’s work ‘Jew with Torah’ was the very first work to enter the Museum.

“The Museum has thirteen masterworks by Marc Chagall. Three works were a gift of the artist, the remaining ten works and many others were donated by friends from around the world. Marc Chagall visited Israel eight times. He died at the age of 97 [in 1985] in Saint-Paul de Vence, France.”

To honor the new wing, the Museum opened a special exhibition entitled Five Moments: Trajectories in the Architecture of the Tel Aviv Museum which presents “five key moments in the Museum’s history through five architectural prisms, providing two different and complementary viewpoints that turn these moments into a complete cultural continuum.”

Hopefully, Chagall’s contribution is mentioned as a force driving those trajectories. It’s nice to think of his spirit infusing the new wing, with lovers, doves, cows, sheep and fiddlers, all in constant ascension along the Lightfall towards the open sky.

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What you might not know is that this nomination was put forth by three partners: Israel, Jordan and the Palestinian Authority, whose respective Tourism Authorities have been promoting the campaign this week in a final race to the finish.

High atop Tel Aviv’s Azrieli Tower, a giant counter is now ticking away, showing the time left to vote. The Ministry of Tourism and the Prime Minister’s Office has called upon the public to vote for the Dead Sea, either by texting “11.11.11″ to the number 2244 with the words: Dead Sea in English, Hebrew or Arabic, or online at the Ministry of Tourism’s website or on the campaign’s official website. Or you can just click on the New7Wonders link on the right-hand side of this page.

The New7Wonders of Nature campaign launched in 2007, immediately after the successful campaign to elect the man-made Official New 7 Wonders of the World. Its been reported on by Israelity since David first blogged about the nomination three years ago and a year later, when ISRAEL21c reported that the nomination was confirmed.

Various events promoting the campaign have included dancer-choreographer Ido Tadmor dance on the Dead Sea’s salty banks, a delegation of Harley-Davidson motorcycle bikers, and most recently, a mass naked happening by performance artist Spencer Tunick.

And now, as Brian wrote a few weeks ago, we are down to the final stretch.

The campaign has also been backed by regional environmental organization Friends of the Earth Middle East, who met this summer with New7Wonders President and Founder Bernard Weber and New7Wonders Director Jean-Paul de la Fuente to discuss their aligned interests.

Weber was quoted as saying, “New7Wonders and Friends of the Earth Middle East share the same nature-without-borders vision for the Dead Sea, and will continue to work together to ensure that positive and active participation in the New7Wonders of Nature will help foster dialogue and collaboration around natural and environmental objectives.”

Visit the New7Wonders website to vote, view and upload images to their online photo gallery, watch videos and read stories about the Dead Sea. Voting for the New7Wonders of Nature ends on 11.11.11, and the campaign to name the New7Wonders Cities has just launched. Jerusalem, anyone?

Pictures courtesy of the Israel Ministry of Tourism, New7Wonders.

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Founded in 1979, Clil’s unique character has been determined by not only by its residents — many of whom are professional artists, artisans, musicians and writers — but by the surrounding landscape, fields and orchards planted over the years.

Silverman trained as a commercial photographer in the US and began studying Feng Shui in 1972. After moving to Israel in 1974 he worked in advertising, multimedia and later on, as high-tech in Israel gathered steam, in software, multimedia and Internet design.

Today, he teaches design and photography, and acts as a consultant to businesses interested in using Feng Shui principles in the workplace.

According to Chinese scripture, “Chi rides the wind and scatters but is retained when encountering water” (the term Feng Shui actually translates to “wind-water”). The art of creating a framework for the untamed describes perfectly the latest photographic series from Silverman, Weeds 2011.

Within his viewfinder, a simple blade of grass suddenly gains form and stature…

The world reflected in a drop of water…

A half-dead dandelion takes on new life…

More photos can be found on Michael Silverman’s Picasa page, Facebook page, and YouTube channel, where he’s also shared some lovely slideshows. Here’s one to start with. Enjoy.

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