Shai Kremer's Fallen Empires

Internationally acclaimed contemporary photographer, Shai Kremer, has a very specific yet compelling oeuvre—he documents landscapes marred by the militarization of Israeli society.

Born in Israel in 1974, Kremer’s transfixing photographs are an exposé of the indelible mark military presence has had on his homeland throughout antiquity.

Kremer’s latest solo exhibition, Fallen Empires, will be a featured exhibit in the Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival. The Julie M. Gallery (15Mill Street Building 37, Suite 103) will present Fallen Empires. Toronto, ON) from May 5^th to June 12^th. The exhibit is accompanied by an eponymous monograp published by Radius Books (2011). An opening night reception with Kremer will be held at the gallery on May 5^th from 6 to 9pm.

Despite his hectic schedule, Kremer was gracious enough to sit down with Shalom Life to answer a few of our questions.

Sarah Bauder (SB): What drew you to photography as a medium?

Shai Kremer (SK): It happened very naturally as I have been playing with a camera since I was 14 years old, when my father bought me a camera for a photography evening class. I spent many long nights in the Kibbutz communal photo-lab, finding out the magic of black-and-white printing and leaving the dark room only to discover that it was morning already.

SB: How long have you been a photographer?

SK: My professional path started at the Camera Obscura Tel Aviv art school when I was 24 years old, 13 years ago. Then I did some commercial work - mostly still-life and architecture - before going back to graduate school in New York, at the renowned School of Visual Arts, where I obtained my Master in Fine Arts in Photography and Related Media. In the past 5 years I have been fortunate enough to be able to dedicate myself exclusively to my fine art career, with the help of the six galleries representing my work internationally (New York, San Francisco, Toronto, London and Tel Aviv). As of today, the work was shown or is included in the collections of the New York Metropolitan Museum of Arts, the SF MoMA, the Tate, the Israel Museum Jerusalem, the Tel Aviv Museum amongst others.

SB: Can you tell us a bit about the "Fallen Empires" series?

SK: The best will be to give you my statement, please see below: (excerpt from Fallen Empires monograph)

“What if we ”speak with our eyes” of Israel’s past? There is a visual history over and under the surface, spoken by the land and its stones and by all the civilizations that have arisen there. Israel is a sophisticated and manipulated palimpsest. Extensively covered by the media, debated by nations, claimed by religions, it is also a case study about the phenomena of empires. By visually highlighting Israel’s vast archaeological repertoire, its architecture and its ruins, I question how they are used today in the discourse of the Israeli-Palestinian situation and the future of the country. In the preceding pages, you have seen images containing, in one single frame, sediments of periods covering thousands of years and numerous governmental systems.

For example, around a small private aerodrome near the ancient city of Be’er Sheva, airplane hangars dating from the British Mandate period (1920–1948) are scattered. Over Zion Gate in the old city of Jerusalem, a surveillance camera scrutinizes our age, itself embedded in stones from the reign of Suleiman, and pockmarked by bullet holes from the 1948 war. Finally, in the ruined Palestinian village of Lifta, one can see the light of the construction site of a future rescue exit tunnel from an underground emergency nuclear bunker of the Israeli parliament. Such cases open a window through time on a landscape so familiar that we do not question it anymore.

Israel is overloaded with sediments of past empires. More than half of the current IDF (Israel Defense Forces) strongholds rest on the ruins of military sites of former empires. The recycling of these spaces, from one conqueror to the next, shows how most empires tried to conquer and rule this land, with one similar outcome: they eventually failed. Dozens of excavated archaeological strata tell this complex multicultural saga - ironically enough, the remains are here to remind us that no human construct is everlasting. My images of these vestiges of occupation are a platform for discussion about the legitimacy and efficiency of imperialism and its use of power. The camera unearths testimonies from the past and shows a different perspective. It reveals inconvenient truths and explores the landscape as a place of amnesia and erasure. It exposes Israel as a strategic site where the past has been buried and history veiled with natural beauty highlighting Adorno’s remark that “the beautiful in nature is history standing still and refusing to unfold.”

Every cultural struggle over territory involves overlapping memories, narratives and physical structures. Edward Said underlined this in his book, Invention, Memory and Place, stating that memory, and its translation into history, is far from being neutral. It touches on questions of identity, nationalism, power and authority. Memory is used by nations to construct loyalty to country, tradition and faith. I am pointing my camera at the landscape in order to dig and explore a reality of Israel behind the headlines and the touristic adoration, to reveal the landscape as a cultural force, an instrument in the construction of national and social identities.

Only by under- standing the mix of geographical landscape with historical memory can one understand the persistence of the conflict and the difficulty in resolving it. Sigmund Freud, in Civilization and Its Discontents, uses the analogy of Rome to explain that it is overwhelming, hence impossible, that each building and statue from all periods of Roman history exist simultaneously in our consciousness. However, time has come to open our eyes to the many realities and the various antagonistic narratives that cohabit on the Israeli landscape.

What can be shown photographically that would express this question of layering of narratives? How does the experience of ruin—and ruin upon ruin— appear today in Israel? W.J.T. Mitchell writes in Landscape and Power: “. . . the landscape looks back in some way at its beholders, returning their gaze with a blank, impassive stare, its face scarred with the traces of violence and destruction and (even more important) with the violent constructions that erupt on its surface. . . . The landscape becomes a magical object, an idol that demands human sacrifices, a place where symbolic, imaginary and real violence implode on an actual social space. . . . The fantasy has now been realized in an idolatry of a place, a territorial mysticism enforced by bullets and bulldozers. The challenge is to sound out this idolatry, to unbind its fascination.

”This photographic document points out opposing narratives and strays away from one-sided simplistic views. My intent is to offer a stage where viewers can think about new relationships between the different histories and identities, assembled and disassembled in the wake of the creation of Israel. It is an incitement to open a critical and civic discussion about this country as a place where different perspectives existed and still exist, and to reflect on new possibilities today.”

SB: What was your impetus for exploring the subject matter as a whole?

(SK): I wanted to convey the message that force only, if unjust, cannot prevail forever. At some point, intelligence and creative open constructive ideas are more efficient and longer lasting than any army or military power. In the past, any empire maintaining itself exclusively by force has collapsed eventually. Today all the more, with the advance of technology, any unfair dictatorship, occupation, lack of human rights cannot sustain forever. We’ve seen it recently with the Arab Spring Revolutions that took over the Arab world, just while I was launching this book. For Israel likewise, keeping a status quo through a forceful and illegitimate occupation cannot be a long-term solution. Time has long arrived to find more creative, modern and collaborative ways.

(SB): Do you have a favourite photograph in the series? If yes, could you elaborate why?

(SK): It would be the Maoz Esther panorama. This image is very frontal, simple and clear, and if you noticed, I included my self in the frame (bottom right shadow) paying homage to Lee Friedlander. The frame includes the human factor as a “detail” of life and history. The furniture remains – even though they are at the center of the picture - are lost within the huge empty landscape. This underlines the transience of humankind, its temporality, its fragility. In comparison, as seen on the picture, nature, the “land” is omnipresent and omnipotent. To me, this signifies that human beings need to ally to survive left alone, they’re disempowered. Without being an idealist, I believe that any political unjust cause cannot be sustained forever. If not supported universally, it will be eventually eradicated, as shown by history over and over. In this case, the settlers illegal occupation of Palestine will have to end at some point, hopefully my image will be, as often, premonitory.

(SB): What is next on the agenda for you?

(SK): I have been working on a project about New York, where I spend half of my time yearly and where my son was born and raised for the past 3 years. In view of this new fact, I have to explore deeper my relationship with this city. I have always experienced a “love and hate” love story with New York. The fact that I arrived right after “September 11th “ and that I lived there throughout the 2008 crisis probably has something to do with it, but in any case I need to come to terms. I intend to do this - as always - through my photography, by showing under a very personal angle what is called the Capital of the World.