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Exhibition of Photographs by Elle Flanders & Tamira Sawatzky Opening Reception to be announced What Isn’t There is an ongoing collaboration between filmmaker and photographer Elle Flanders and architect Tamira Sawatzky, documenting the places where Palestinian villages once stood.
The creation of the State of Israel in 1948 signaled the end of these villages, through force and exile, and since that time many have returned to nature. While Flanders and Sawatzky occasionally find small signs of past and present habitation, they are more concerned with what truly remains -- the unsettling presence of absence.
Flanders, who grew up in Israel, has been photographing sites of former Palestinian villages for over 15 years. Hiking in the countryside as a child, Flanders read the landscape through an Israeli narrative. Later, as an adult, she learned a completely different history, a history of dispossession. Before the arrival of Google maps, finding these villages was a complex task. Flanders traced old Palestinian maps onto maps of present day Israel, and searched for revealing signs at the sites: fruit or olive trees, the remains of building foundations or stone walls.
As an architect, Sawatzky’s point of departure has been to investigate the relationship between building and landscape. Her socially engaged approach involves interpreting architecture within its geopolitical context, regardless of what still stands. These seemingly picturesque landscapes that portray the site of former villages ask the viewer to consider the function of photography and the underlying social dynamics that disrupt this idyllic scenery.
By positioning a deceptively peaceful setting within an urban environment, Flanders and Sawatzky implicate the viewer as a silent witness, raising questions about history and land ownership. To learn more about work of Elle Flanders: graphicpictures.org
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