In Our Image

Includes photographs of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and its corrosive effect on Israeli society. Introductory text by Yeshayahu Leibovitch
When I began to photograph in 1980 on a kibbutz, in Tel Aviv and particularly in Jerusalem, I was drawn to the unusual scenes in the outdoors and particularly on the streets. Influenced by the work of Diane Arbus, Cartier Bresson and Robert Frank, I aspired to create a book of photographs about Israel. If I was to present a photo document, the conflicts in Israel were essential. I therefore photographed the evacuation of Yamit, the First Lebanon War, the Occupation of Gaza and the West Bank and radical political gatherings within the country. What began originally as street photography became a search to document and comment on the Israeli reality. The opportunity to photograph the work of a Tel Aviv undercover police unit emphasized the violent and sometimes cruel treatment of Arabs in Israel.
The exhibition of these photographs at the Israel Museum along with the publication of this book was the first time images of the Occupation were publicly exposed. The First Intifada, which broke out a short while later, verified the extent of violence ingrained in the “enlightened occupation.” The threat to the State of Israel was graphically revealed in the final photograph of the book, an Israeli flag covering the bedding in a Bedouin tent.
-- Joel Kantor