Foto Friday – Gabriel Benaim looks at Tel Aviv
Filed under: Art, Foto Friday, General, History and Culture, Travel
Photographer Gabriel Benaim is originally from Panama City and now lives and works in Tel Aviv. He studied philosophy but has in the last six years devoted himself to photography and is currently working on a long term project documenting the city of Tel Aviv on its 100th anniversary.
In this series, Benaim created compositions using the structures of Tel Aviv, the armatures, patterns and textures unique to the city. In his framing, he makes order out of the disorder, sanity out of a crazy hodge-podge.
Benaim is part of a small group of photographers worldwide who still use only traditional photographic materials, i.e. film and silver paper. He works almost exclusively with an 8×10 camera, and prints on silver chloride paper, usually Azo, the last silver chloride paper widely available, as well as its recent replacement, Lodima Fine Art paper.
It provides a range of tones and warmth that suits the Tel Aviv urban landscape as it shimmers and simmers in the hot summer sun.
It’s best to look at Benaim’s pictures full-sized on his website or on his blog, where he posts both explanations about photographic technique and discusses his work. When he began the Tel Aviv series last summer, he writes, he “was obsessed with extreme views from above, be it rooftops, hills, whatever. It was as if I had this visual idea in my head which I had to find somewhere out there…The allure of the high vantage point is fairly obvious, especially for anyone interested in abstraction. Almost anything looks interesting from above, if only because we’re so unused to the perspective.”
Viewed in black in white, rather than its true Technicolor, and from a distance, rather than street level, Benaim gives shape to the ungainly adolescent that is Israel’s biggest city — 100 years young and with a long way yet to grow.
Nostalgia Sunday – Lebanon 1982
Filed under: General, History and Culture, Life, Nostalgia Sunday, War
They’re not happy memories. However, it seems appropriate, on the eve of Waltz With Bashir’s possible Oscar win, to glean the National Photo Collection for photos of the 1982 Lebanon War that capture something of the movie’s essence.
Sidon – IDF soldier on patrol near Ferris wheel. Photo: Shmuel Rahmany
Zaharani area – burning fuel depot. Photo: Beni Tel-Or
Tyre – Ancient Roman ruins with modern buildings in background. Photo: Yaacov Saar
Sidon – Returning to the marketplace. Photo: Yaacov Saar
Central Lebanon – Two Israeli soldiers take a forbidden dip in a stream. Photo: Yossi Roth
Tel Aviv Fairgrounds – Israeli citizens visit a display of a captured PLO arsenal. Photo: Avraham Zaslavski
Tel Aviv – Minister of Defense Ariel Sharon presents objectives at a press conference. Photo: Yaacov Saar
Sidon – Movie poster: “The Land That Time Forgot“. Photo: Yoel Kantor
Foto Friday – Post-Election Fun
Filed under: Foto Friday, General, Israeliness, Politics, Pop Culture
This just in: President Shimon Peres has tasked Benjamin Netanyahu with forming the government. And so, the coalition-building process begins. Against the background of political posturing, jockeying for positions and a moment before disillusionment sets in, Tomeriko, photographer, photo editor and informal archivist of Israeli press photographers, has posted a new series of images on his Israel Press Flickr photostream. Entitled Elections 2009, it provides a humorous behind-the-scenes peek at the recent elections.
Photo by Koko, courtesy of Israel Press
The series, contributed by any number of Israeli press photographers working for various media outlets, deals with the run-up to election day, including things that people living outside Israel might not have known about.
Photo by Koko, courtesy of Israel Press
For example, Kadima party head Tzipi Livni on the cover of womens magazine La’Isha. When she was a little girl, could she ever have imagined this day would come?
Photo by Idan Kenan, courtesy of Israel Press
Inevitably, there are instances of campaign poster abuse…
Photo by Aviad Herman, courtesy of Israel Press
With some enthusiastic party workers perhaps taking the “green” message a tad to far…
Photo by Tamar Matsafi, courtesy of Israel Press
There are those who use election day to promote their own personal agenda…
Photo by Adi Yisrael, courtesy of Israel Press
And some who just tag along…
Photo by Alex Kolomoisky, courtesy of Israel Press
But the big question remains: do we know which way we’re actually going?
Photo by Adi Yisrael, courtesy of Israel Press
Foto Friday – Down at the Dead Sea with Shmuel Browns
Filed under: Art, Environment, Foto Friday, General, Travel
Canadian-Israeli Shmuel Browns is a licensed tour-guide and artist who uses photography to share his love of nature. A recent exhibit, From the Lowest Place on Earth presented images of the Dead Sea, a miraculous body of salt water whose name belies its true nature.
The region – 420 meters below sea level – possesses unique geographical, biological and historical characteristics, and the sea itself is rich in minerals that, coupled with its stark beauty, have made it a center for spa tourism.
So much for the good news. The bad news is that the Dead Sea is dying or, more accurately put, being killed off. It is shrinking at a rate of 1 meter per year as both Israel and Jordan divert the waters flowing into it, leaving huge mud flats with hundreds of sinkholes that lie in the sun like open wounds crusted with salt.
In his artist’s statement, Browns writes: “Even as the world is rapidly changing, as humanity encroaches, these photographs capture nature in a serene moment. The exhibit explores contrast–between wet and dry, water and desert; the contrast between rock and vegetation, and between the broad horizontal expanse of the Dead Sea and the cliffs and mountains that rise vertically above it; the contrast between nature and human industry.”
This surreal moonscape is Dead Sea Works, a subsidiary of Israel Chemicals, a multibillion dollar industry and part of the lifeblood of Israel’s economy. Shutting it down isn’t an option for the immediate future but a comprehensive integrated development plan for the entire region has been proposed by Friends of the Earth Middle East (FoEME).
Last summer, Browns had the opportunity to show these images of the lowest place on earth in a Katmandu gallery, in the shadow of the highest mountains on earth. The exhibit can be found online on his Facebook page.
Foto Friday – A Zalul Look at Water
Filed under: Art, Environment, Foto Friday, General, Life
Israeli NGO Zalul Environmental Association is a nonprofit committed to protecting and maintaining clean, clear water along Israel’s rivers and shorelines.
Shay Tal – “Goin’ in” – Dolphinarium Beach, Tel Aviv
In time for Tu b’Shvat, the Jewish holiday that celebrates the coming of spring, Zalul has launched a photo competition. The results are nothing short of impressive:
Orit Zisman – “Jellyfish” – Tel Aviv
The theme of the contest is “Mayim Chaim” (”Water of Life”), celebrating that most precious natural resource, water, which Zalul points out is the source of life not just for trees, but for all living things.
Ben Hadar – “Holy Water” – Greek Orthodox Church, Nazareth
As Zalul sees it, “Tu B’Shvat is the “New Year of the Trees” in the Jewish tradition. However, in modern times it has been reinterpreted as the Jewish Earth Day. Each year, Jews around the world come together to celebrate the holiday by planting trees, cleaning beaches, and participating in other acts of “Tikkun Olam” (repairing the world).”
Asaf Shal – “Water love”
And there are prizes for the top three photos! The first place winner will receive a jacket from Columbia Sportswear; a Billabong beach kit including a backpack, inflatable pillow, beach mat, and a drink cozy as well as a hat and t-shirt from Zalul. What are you waiting for, shutterbugs? Take a look at their Flickr page, go out this weekend and start snapping!
Amir Levon – “Raft” – Green Beach, Eilat
The competition closes on on February 8, 2009 (until 23:00) and full details are available at the Zalul website.
Nostalgia Sunday – The “Fashion Show” exhibit
Filed under: Art, General, History and Culture, Nostalgia Sunday, Pop Culture
An unusual and important exhibition opened this past week at the Jerusalem Theater. “Fashion Show” is a retrospective of costumes from the Hebrew-language stage, dating from 1922 to the present day. Some of the costumes are original, others were recreated from sketches and photographs.
This is the first exhibition of its kind in Israel and was a huge collaborative labor of love between the theaters, AMBI – the local branch of OISTAT (the international union of theater professionals), archives, museums, designers, researchers and private collectors. There are works by visual artists who sometimes contributed to the stage — Nahum Gutman, Natan Altman, Yossele Bergner, Moshe Mokady and David Sharir to name a few — as well as those costume designers less-known to audiences abroad.
Here, for example, is the dress worn by legendary HaBima actress Hanna Rovina, in “The Dybbuk”. In her time, Rovina — “First Lady of Hebrew Theater” — and HaBima were so identified with the play that her character, Lea’leh, in long tresses and flowing white gown, became the theater’s logo for awhile.
This dress from “She Stoops to Conquer” is by Lydia Pincus-Gani, one of the country’s foremost stage and costume designers in the 1960s and 1970s.
I studied with Lydia at Tel Aviv University in the 1980s, and she was not one to be trifled with. We’d slave for weeks over a maquette (a scale model of a stage set) and bring it, shaking and trembling, for Lydia to review. She’d stare at it, hunched over, centimeters of slow-burning ash dangling precariously at the end of a cigarette hovering above delicate bits of carton and balsa wood…
And then… flick! Somehow, most of the soot made it onto the floor. “What is this kakamayka?”, she’d ask, referring derisively to some nonsensical balustrade or extraneous stairway. (For bulky objects there was “What is this plonter?). Those who made it through the first year of her reign of terror benefited by being made her assistant on various shows at HaBima or the Cameri, and some of her students became the designers whose work is now on display.
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