Foto Friday – Kobi Israel’s Fragments of Life

December 10, 2010 - 9:45 PM by · 1 Comment
Filed under: A New Reality, Art, coexistence, Foto Friday, General, Life, Picture of the Week, Pop Culture, Social Justice, Travel 

Photographer Kobi Israel uses the medium of photography to explore his experience of growing up gay in the macho Israeli society of the mid-70s and early 80s.

Israel was born in 1970 in a suburb of Tel-Aviv to parents of Moroccan and Egyptian origin and first began exploring photography in 1994, while working as a flight attendant. He studied cinematography at the New York Film Academy, then completed a five-year program in Cinematography & Still Photography at Tel-Aviv’s Camera Obscura school of visual arts.

In his first series, entitled “Views”, Israel recreated scenes from his days as a soldier in the Israel Defense Forces. The images he states, “addresses the fine line that divides the homo-social and the homo-erotic aspects of lives of soldiers in the army. These images depict soldiers living their lives in their brotherly proximity to each other and hint at the tensions and desires that may have existed between these young men, as they had for me during my youth in the army.”

His next series, “Fragments of Life” from 2000-2003 is a series of staged images through which he leads the viewer into his world of memories, conflicts and trapped emotions. “I recreated and reinvented fragments of my own life as an adolescent discovering his sexuality, growing up in a non-tolerant conservative society,” he states.

In 2002 after a brief stint in Madrid, he settled in London, studying for an MA in Fine Art, Central Saint Martins – University of Arts, and working on photographic series and mixed-media works. Israel is a masterful technician in terms of lighting and composition, and his photographs have been published in books and magazines, plus he’s received several prestigious awards.

Israel’s latest works look at his new life as a stranger traveling in strange lands: England, Cuba, Iceland. His works — which with time have become more thematically abstract, exploring ideas such as memory, yearning, dream and reality — are part of private and public art collections. More images are on view at his website.

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Rally in Tel Aviv

August 9, 2009 - 11:24 AM by · 3 Comments
Filed under: A New Reality, coexistence, Crime, General, Israeliness, Life 

(Photo: Reuters/ Ronen Zvulun)

(Photo: Reuters/ Ronen Zvulun)

It makes you proud to live here. Last night, over 20,000 people gathered at Rabin Square in Tel Aviv to express solidarity with the gay community, a week after a gunman killed two people at a center for gay youth.

“The bullets that hit the gay community at the beginning of the week struck us all as people, as Jews, as Israelis … criminals will not set our agenda,” said President Shimon Peres from the podium. “The Creator of the world did not endow anyone with the power to murder his peer.”

Tel Aviv Mayor Ron Huldai also spoke at the rally, saying that “we thought that in Tel Aviv-Yafo… we had created an open and accepting society for our children.”

Police still have the case under a gag order, and have not revealed a motive for the shooting. Speculation ranges from it being a hate crime against gays to a personal attack, either by a father of one of the center’s patron’s or perhaps a scorned romantic involvement. Outspoken activists were quick to point fingers at conservative, religious legislators for creating an environment that would enable the attack to occur, but there’s been no evidence released tying in any religious aspects to the shooting.

Last Saturday, a masked gunman burst into a community centre for gay teenagers in Tel Aviv and shot dead Nir Katz, 26-year-old, and a 16-year-old Liz Trubeshi. Thirteen other people were wounded.

Vigils have been held at cities around the world for the victims, and last night, several musicians and entertainers appeared at the Tel Aviv rally, including Rita, Dana International, Ninette Tayeb, Amir Fay Guttman, Keren Peles, Corinne Alal and Ivri Lider.

Would it better if if turned out that the shooter was targeting gays out of hate, or if it was simply a random mass shooting, the kind that takes place in the US on a weekly basis, like last week’s ramapage at a fitness center in Pennsylvania? Both scenarios are kind of horrific, and neither bode well for Israeli society.

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