In 1999 I started photographing the ominous imprint of the military on the Israeli landscape – and reflectively, on Israeli society. My images Mirror the psychological trauma and resulting ambivalence of living in world of friction, they also warn against vestiges of warfare becoming a permanent fixture in people’s lives.
Susan Sonntag explained how the media war images make us callous to violence and the suffering of others. I also agree with Richard Misrach saying that « beauty can be very powerful conveyor of difficult ideas ». The images I shoot are often formally attractive, aesthetic, orderly compositions apparently « innocent » and poetic. This parallels the defense mechanisms developed unconscious of the country. The landscape, infected with loaded sedimens on the ongoing conflict, becomes a platform for discussion.
The photographs attract the viewer, seduce him closer then challenge him to reflect on their meaning and implications : a personal style that has been called « both clinical and emotional ».
As written by Sverker Svorlin, « military landscapes… are collective memories. They remind us that political violence has a spatiality and that it can be found also amongst landscape that we have learned to love. … Giving these military landscape some visibility may therefore be an act of peace. »
Shai Kremer
Infected Landscape
September 8 – November 3, 2012
Le bleu du ciel
12 rue des Fantasques – 69001 Lyon
France
