Between HaNegev and HaGalil

Between HaNegev and HaGalil documents, through photographs and written reflections, the encounters of photographer Yonatan Nevo with people living around Tel Aviv’s old Central Bus Station (between Negev Street and Galil Street)—people experiencing homelessness, drug addiction, and prostitution—in collaboration with his mother, Michal Krumer-Nevo, a researcher and activist in the field of poverty. The book weaves a delicate fabric between two perspectives: the intimate and intuitive, alongside the theoretical and professional, thus offering readers a way of seeing, through human eyes, those whom the gaze is unaccustomed to seeing.
The visibility of people on the margins is deceptive: because the general public is repeatedly exposed to worn-out images of them, it seems as though we all know what they look like, yet most people have never truly looked at them up close.

The book seeks both to see and to show them through an ongoing reflexive process that confronts the hegemonic gaze, which casts them as the Other—foreign and threatening. In the tradition of critical documentary photobooks known in the history of photography, the book presents, alongside the photographs, distinctive voices and dialogues: the photographed individuals speak about themselves and their lives, convey messages to readers, and engage in painfully aware conversations with Yonatan about how they are usually seen; Yonatan writes in the first person about the development of his relationships with them; Yonatan and Michal engage in an intimate, reflexive dialogue about the intense experiences the street engenders; and Michal offers brief written reflections that situate the broader theoretical context of the ethical issues with which this book—and anyone seeking to genuinely understand the realities of life on the street—must contend.