THE PRESENCE OF THE VOID
Tel Aviv Cinemathek, Israel
2013
The Presence of the Void
How do you photograph nothingness? Does it possess an image, a shape, a color, or is it perchance an abstract collection of sensations and memories? Ten bereaved women – Israeli and Palestinian mothers, daughters, sisters and nieces who have lost their loved ones in the never-ending war between the two peoples – attempt to portray the absent, the missing, the fallen.
It is present in the room where each item immutably remains, in the clock that stopped, in the window that let through the bad tidings, in the child that bears his name.
The collection of photographs in the exhibition has been chosen from among those the women shot in their natural surroundings and during mutual visits on both sides of the border. For most of the women this was their first acquaintance with a camera, for all of them this was their first acquaintance with the language of photography.
Project moderators: Vardi Kahana, Atta Awisat and Miki Kratsman