Load

The series "Load" (2006) was commissioned by Yona Fisher, the curator of the Ashdod Museum of Art, and was entirely photographed in one location in the city of Ashdod – a middle and working-class city in the south of Israel that is populated by a large number of immigrants and surrounded by an expanse of desert.
These photographs feature passersby in a sort of urban no-man’s land, and engage with this site as a way of reflecting on the daily, Sisyphean routines of the people they capture. The body language of the photographed subjects itself comments upon these themes: they appear withdrawn, their downcast gazes are directed at the ground, and their shadows make them appear smaller than they are. The contrast between their routine, quotidian movement through this stretch of urban wildness and the bright Israeli sun underscores the sense of individual difficulty that pervades these images; the pile of debris in the background contributes to the indeterminate character of this space, while appearing as simultaneously as a sign of both construction and demolition. I chose this location after wandering at length through the city. When I came upon it, I thought of Karl Marx's observation that "Men can see nothing around them that is not their own image; everything speaks to them of themselves. Their very landscape is alive."

Exhibition Curator: Yona Fisher