Israel Inside Out

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Taken together, these myriad images and the oversized text accompanying them read like a picture book that demands a deeper look at Israel. It is an investigation, Broomberg explains in an interview, that the two London-based photographer-writers felt compelled to pursue after visiting the West Bank city of Ramallah a few years ago for an international film festival. The two, who have photographed the world's hot spots together for 10 years, were shocked by what they saw. There was the widespread unemployment and the erosion of dignity at roadblocks and checkpoints, but also the frustration, isolation, and cultural alienation. And then there was the shock of their own naivete.

They returned to Israel -- a place they had both visited in their youth, where they joined other Jews in planting trees like those in the forests of Chicago -- and saw a culture reminiscent of that in their native country, South Africa, under apartheid. 'It's a strange mixture of denial and naivete,' Broomberg says. 'It's a reality kept from most Israelis, where everyone's lying on the beach, having a good time, exactly like South Africa in the 1980s.'

Then they set out to translate the emerging body of literature coming from critical Israeli academics like Weizman into a 'visual poem,' pursuing their politically and emotionally charged project with a calm, distanced style. The result is a visual interpretation that is particularly crucial now, as the world looks back at 40 years of Israel's occupation of Palestinian territories seized in the Six-Day War. That overwhelming victory, political analyst Yaron Ezrahi wrote 10 years ago in his award-winning study of Israel's shifting identity, Rubber Bullets: Power and Conscience in Modern Israel (University of California Press), was seen by many Israelis and Jews worldwide 'as a turning point, a license for Jews to historicize the fantasy of a resurrected Jewish kingdom, validation of the 'Holy History' of the Jewish people.'

As the pages of Chicago show, it is a costly vision -- for Palestinians and for Israelis -- that requires a fresh set of eyes.

You can see the images in Chicago, as well as photos from Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin's other collections, at www.choppedliver.info.

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