(Temporary) Salvation

Photographs, a personal text and a quote from Camus: “Nobody realized that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal.”
After 20 years of photography, both in Canada and in Israel, there was a pile of photographs in my desk that I kept for “photographic” reasons. They did not find a place in prior books nor were they part of any conscious story that I planned to tell.
Mankind was approaching the new millennium and there were all kinds of prophecies and scientific theories filling the media from the coming of the Messiah to the imminent collapse of the computer systems of the world.
The theme of salvation seemed to come to light for me. The different ideas that are the basis of salvation and which keep a person functioning normally in spite of his challenges. Each man’s salvation offered temporary relief within his life story. Looking back I might have used the word “meaning” instead of salvation and yet it was perhaps the drama of the times that led to the word “salvation.” Certainly in the period of creating this book it became my personal salvation as much as photography has become my salvation these past forty years.
-- Joel Kantor