Foto Friday – Behind the Urban Outfitters Scene
Filed under: Art, Blogging, Business, design, Entertainment, Foto Friday, General, Pop Culture, Travel
A few weeks ago, Jessica reported that Urban Outfitters had come to Israel for a catalogue shoot. Urban Outfitters has since posted a sneak peek on Facebook at their Early Spring line, which includes some gorgeous shots of some equally gorgeous people making our drab winter surroundings that much brighter.
Along with the fashion shots, there are also some interesting artistic ones as well. That’s because three of the models — Coco Young, Marcel Castenmiller and Jonas Kesseler — are also photographers in their own right. Urban Outfitters who, despite their retro aesthetic, are ever on the cutting edge, asked the trio to document their Israel experience with a Behind the Scenes look.
The result: “Their photos reveal the little unexpected moments that make a trip special – snacks, late nights and the people that you meet for a second but will remember forever.”
The full exhibition is posted on the Urban Outfitters blog, along with interviews with the artists. Coco Young said that the Dead Sea was one of the trip’s highlights.
Photo by Coco Young
She also kept an eye out for unusual fashion statements.
Photo by Coco Young
The Dead Sea was also a highlight for Marcel Castenmiller but his favorite part of the day, he said, was “Getting back to the hotel room and staying up late with Coco and Jonas drinking wine.”
Photo by Marcel Castenmiller
And the absurd little details of a country where a kitchen clock gets tied to a street lamp — for heaven knows what reason — didn’t escape his notice.
Photo by Marcel Castenmiller
Jonas Kesseler said the funniest moment of his trip was arriving at the airport only to be strip-searched on his way into Israel. Glad to hear he kept a sense of humor about it. Certainly, that wit is reflected in his work.
Photos by Jonas Kesseler
Kesseler’s website, by the way, features a photo and drawing essay about his “wandering the endless streets of Tokyo”. Here’s hoping that a new edition — the lighter side of coming hard up against the finite borders of our little country, perhaps? — will turn up in the near future. As for Urban Outfitters, a radio commentator put it best today when he said, “Next time you come, please could you bring a branch of your store with you, too?”
Foto Friday – Desert Queens set forth
Filed under: A New Reality, Environment, Foto Friday, General, Life, Sports, Travel
This week, dozens of women from Israel and around the world embarked on an adventure: the third annual women-only Desert Queen jeep expedition. Part outdoor experience, part competition, the Desert Queen combines 4WD driving through Israel’s desert with personal empowerment.
Organized by the Jewish Agency for Israel and Geographical Tours with the cooperation of the Ministry of Tourism, the Israeli jeep expedition is a sister project of the international Desert Queen journeys that, for over a decade, have been bringing adventuresome women to exotic destinations around the world, such as the Balkans, South Africa and Lapland.
The Israeli journey got its start in 2008 when, in honor of the State of Israel’s 60th Anniversary, the Jewish Agency’s Partnership 2000 program and Geographical Tours brought women from the world’s Jewish communities together with Israeli women on first Desert Queen expedition to take place in Israel. In three short years the journey has become a well-known brand, with thousands of women applying each year, either individually or as a team, to take part in the pre-selection trials. It doesn’t come cheap. If they pass, the finalists pay a $1,500 price tag to participate in the Desert Queen.
Photo: Eva Taylor
The journeys are based on a 4×4 jeep convoy in which the female team members (3-4 per vehicle) drive through challenging terrain and are put to the test as individuals and as a team. Along the way, participants contend with various geographical, physical, cultural and personal challenges that includes hiking, self-exploration, teamwork, sleeping out in the field and night time activities that apparently have something to do with dancing and fire!
Participants must be aged 20 and over, with a valid driving license but previous 4WD experience is not mandatory. The organizers say, “We teach the participants everything they need to know for the journey, so that even the most inexperienced – can enjoy the driving. You do not need prior knowledge, and by the end of the journey you’ve completed all there is to know about off-road driving.”
Photo: Aya Ben-Ezri
This year’s seven-day journey (from October 27 to November 2, 2010) takes place in Israel’s southern region. It includes Mitzpe Ramon, Nahal Barak and Moa but the organizers keep the final route to themselves, revealing details to participants on a day-to-day basis. The organizers do state that in addition to the traditional jeep and outdoor adventure, Desert Queen 2010 will also include special features, for example, visiting young communities, army bases, a unique desert ecological project and orientation day at the Ben Shemen Forest with MK Tzipi Livni. What more could a girl want? Probably a hot bath… but only when the trip is over and done.
Take a look at expeditions past — and there are more on their YouTube channel. Potential future Desert Queens can apply for the expedition through their website.
Nostalgia Sunday – Class photos
Filed under: A New Reality, design, education, General, History and Culture, Israeliness, Life, Nostalgia Sunday, Pop Culture, War
For decades, the class photo-collage — tmunat mahzor — was the way Israelis marked school graduations. It still is. Unlike the US with is pricey yearbooks, (which have their own historical reasons for coming into being), by grouping them together. the Israeli class photo was a relatively inexpensive way to derive maximum impact from small-sized individual portraits.
In the early days, the graphics were lovingly, if amateurishly, hand-drawn, as in this class photo of the 1929 graduating class of Tel Aviv’s legendary Herzliya Gymnasium.
The collage also documented historical events. The Ramat Gan elementary school’s grade 8-II honored its graduation in 1948 with the words “The first in the State of Israel”.
As the tradition entered its second generation, layout was handed over to the professionals as in this photo-collage of the Acre Naval Academy’s 1957 graduating class.
And mid-century modern was the graphic style of choice.
Even today, there are still photographers in Israel who specialize in creating this style of class photo-collage. Of course, the cameras are digital and the layout (and airbrushing!) is done with Photoshop or similar programs. But the spirit of the thing persists. Here’s the Herzliya Gymnasium senior class, circa 2004.
This last one doesn’t have a lot going for it graphically but it’s very special to me because it’s my eighth grade class photo from 1973-4, marking our graduation from primary school. (You can click on it to get a better look).
Each child was given the large group photo-collage, plus a small white paper packet that contained the individual passport-sized portraits.
1973-4 was of course, the year of the Yom Kippur War. But it was also the year my family spent in Israel; a significant year for me at the end of which I decided Israel was a pretty good place to live. And, as Yom Kippur rolls around again, with this week as time to reflect, perhaps even reconsider, I have to say: I still think so.
Foto Friday – 9/11 Living Memorial
Filed under: Art, design, Foto Friday, General, History and Culture, Picture of the Week, Politics, War
With the somber anniversary of 9/11 approaching, it is fitting to call attention to Jerusalem memorial erected to mark the event and its fallen.
The memorial is literally off the beaten path, situated outside Jerusalem on a road that isn’t yet completed or well-marked. You basically get off Highway 1 at Motza, start heading towards Mevasseret Zion and then veer off on an unpaved road towards Emek HaArazim. A short drive brings visitors to the JNF-KKL Arazim Park and the Bronka Stavsky Rabin Weintraub Living Memorial Plaza.
© Pes & Lev, JerusalemShots
The 30-foot bronze sculpture by artist Eliezer Weisshoff represents an American flag that gradually turns into a memorial flame. It rests on a base of granite brought over from the Twin Towers and is the only memorial site outside New York on which are engraved the names of all those killed. The sculpture was created with the purpose of expressing the event simply and symbolically without the use of elements of destruction, loss and ruin.
Some more excellent images of the 9/11 Memorial by photographer Hanan Isachar are available on his website. And a video of last year’s dedication ceremony has been posted on the US Embassy Tel Aviv YouTube channel. Take a moment to watch and reflect.
Foto Friday – Drora Spitz
Filed under: Art, design, education, Foto Friday, General, History and Culture, Profiles, Technology, Travel
Photographer Drora Spitz is one of Israel’s leading lights in the field of artistic and architectural photography. Since 1972, her art works have been presented at museums and galleries in Israel, Germany, Spain, the US and the UK. Between 1978-2004, Spitz was director of the Department of Photography at the Faculty of Architecture, Urban Planning & Design at Technion, the Israel Institute of Technology, where she also taught photography.
Last week marked another high point in her career: the launch of a book, LIGHT SPACE TIME, which showcases selected works from the past forty years.
Spitz is fascinated by structures and spaces, whether monumental or minute. She chronicled the Sinai desert throughout the 1960s and 70s and the first chapter presents its primordial scenery and diverse populations. Also at that time, she followed the late Israeli sculptor Itzhak Danziger, documenting his conceptual experiments with landscape. (More about Danziger’s work here).
It was during the 70s, while undertaking complicated lab experiments, that Spitz says she invented processes which preceded digital photography. Today, she states, digital technology aids her in interpreting reality in new, conceptual ways. Her recent works, Paper Landscapes, are photos that are deconstructed and then reconstructed, digitally redrawn in bold colors and reproduced in multiple.
The photographs presented today are from the series Light in the Mirror Of Time documenting a Bible handed down through Spitz’s family for 300 years. Spitz’s architectural sensibility transforms pages, thickened by years of use, into geological strata, reflective oases and fantastic land formations.
The book LIGHT SPACE TIME Drora Spitz Photographs 1968-2009 is available for sale at the museum stores of the Tel Aviv Museum of Art; the Haifa Museum of Art; the Tel-Hai Open Photography Museum; as well as at Yudan bookstores in Haifa and Zichron Yaacov; and via internet order. Cost: NIS 195 including VAT and shipping (in Israel).
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