Photographs from this exhibition were presented:
The Sao Paulo Biennale, September 2006
The Museum of Modern Art in Santiago, Chile, 2007
“Dateline: Israel” exhibition at the Jewish Museum of New York, August 2007
Secured Area – A place that is built to provide protection from missiles and air raids – A law that was legislated after the first Gulf War.
There are two series of photographs in this exhibition. Both series were taken in the previous two years and show homogeneous images, which demarcate a mental territory.
The black and white series deals with- concrete shelters, road barriers and images of the separation wall. Those photographs were taken with “Holga” camera, a plastic toy camera. By using this type of a camera, Miki Kratsman attempted to reduce the importance and pathos that images of concrete shelters and barriers usually carry. The low optic quality of the photographs creates a presence for the photo at the expense of the object, thereby destabilizing the object’s status.
The Israeli Separation Wall is a network of obstacles and fortifications meant to separate the Palestinians living in Judea, Samaria and the Gaza Strip from the Israeli population, providing a sense of protection that public shelters used to provide. The whole country will become a Secured Area.
Instead of running to hide in shelters when sirens are heard, we’ll be living in one.
The colored series of photographs was taken while wandering through small development towns in the north of Israel during the Second Lebanon War, and the streets of forsaken development towns in the south, Ofakim and Yerucham. – A mosaic of images expressing distance.
a street, a shelter, a portrait, the inside of a house,
the periphery, waiting, a housing complex, the heat of noon
The outlying development towns were built in order to populate areas, far from the crowded center of Israel. Most of the people that were sent to settle in those faraway development projects, came from disadvantaged background and were not given much choice. The plan was that with government help, those towns would grow to become, large cities.
