Knesset poster decay

January 14, 2009 - 2:19 PM by David · Leave a Comment
Filed under: Art, General, Israeliness, Politics, Pop Culture

Meet the news boss, same as the old boss.

With all the attention on the war against Hamas, one could be forgiven for not remembering that in less than a month, Israel’s going to be electing a new prime minister and Knesset.

Little by little, the campaign posters for the 613 parties running (ok, it’s only ???) are starting to appear on busses and billboards, and the media moguls and spin doctors are gearing up for the always entertaining TV ads which begin airing later this month.

But if you’re waiting for it all to be done and finished, at least one political observer is on your side. Rafi Mann, a veteran journalist for Hebrew paper Ma’ariv, and currently their oped page editor, loves to take photographs of campaign posters – but months and years after they’ve been posted, when they’ve been torn, faded, and petrified by the elements and grafitti artists.

Mann’s been shooting these pieces of ‘art’ for over 12 years, and now, ahead of the February 10th elections, he’s putting on a photography exhibit of some of the best posters – called appropriately ‘Poster Mortem’.

“Sometime after the 1996 elections, I saw some election posters that were still on billboards, pasted one on top of each other, and it was fascinating what happened to them, how they deteriorated and blended together,” Mann told me this week.

“I took some photos, and since then I carry a small camera around and when I’m traveling around the country, whenever I see an interesting old poster still up, I take a picture.”

Poster Mortem promises to be a fascinating look at the political culture in Israel – where Ehud Barak’s face on one poster blends into Bibi Netanyahu’s on the poster beneath it to create a kind of Bela Lugosi hybrid only someone like Tim Burton could think up.

“My sense is that the way the posters look after the elements and time have gotten to them is kind of a metaphor of what happens during elections and the promises that are made,” said Mann.

Let’s hope this year it’s different. But don’t bet on it.

Poster Mortem opens on Thursday evening at Beit Sokolov in Tel Aviv, and will be on display through the elections.

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