£30.00
Cloth-bound hardback, 136 pages
50 colour photos
245mm x 305mm
ISBN: 978-1-907893-20-9

Not available in the USA

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FALLEN EMPIRES
SHAI KREMER
texts by Shai Kremer, Meron Benvenisti,
Anne Wilkes Tucker, Talya Sasson, Amiram Oren, Ariella Azoulay

Israel’s history can be understood through its vast archaeological heritage. Its past exists not only in the written word but also in its land, in the architecture and ruins, in the stones themselves. Each civilization overwrites another, layer upon layer – a sophisticated palimpsest. A single frame can expose the sediment of thousands of years.

The recycling of spaces, from one empire to the next, shows how each sought to conquer and rule the land, all with a similar outcome: eventual failure. Kremer shows the vestiges of this complex multicultural saga, testimonies unearthed from the past that show a different perspective. It is landscape as a place of amnesia and erasure, for Israel is a strategic site where the past has been buried and history veiled by natural beauty.

Kremer’s Israel exists beyond the media headlines and tourist hotspots: it is landscape as cultural force, an instrument in the construction of national and social identity. For Kremer, it is a provocation to critical debate about a country where different perspectives existed, and continue to exist, and where new possibilities can be reflected upon.

Born in 1974 and raised in Israel, Shai Kremer currently lives in Tel Aviv and New York. He has exhibited widely internationally: Tate Modern, London; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; SF MoMA, San Francisco; Chicago Museum of Contemporary Photography; Tel Aviv Museum of Art; The Israel Museum, Jerusalem; the Red Cross Red Crescent Museum, Geneva; Guangzhou Photo Biennale, China; Omotesando Gallery, Tokyo; Vittoriano Art Museum, Rome; PHotoEspaña, Madrid. His work is held by several major museum collections including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; SF MoMA, San Francisco; the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; the Israel Museum, Jerusalem and the Tel Aviv Museum of Art.

£25.00
Hardback
120pp, 66 colour photos
247mm x 295mm
ISBN: 9781904587590

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EXHIBITIONS IN NEW YORK, SAN FRANCISCO, OSLO AND TELAVIV DURING 2008.

INFECTED LANDSCAPE
SHAI KREMER

Infected Landscape by Israeli photographer Shai Kremer is a searing portrait of the military disfiguration of the landscape of Israel.

The accumulation of ruins and military remnants is an important part of what defines the Israeli landscape today – wounds in the landscape that correspond to the wounds in the Israeli collective consciousness.

The book includes photographs from the ‘Chicago’ miltary training centre in Israel. This centre encapsulates the history of the Israel-Palestine conflict. Over the years it has been rebuilt to represent different war environments and reflect varying scenarios – from Lebanon through to Gaza City. A further area was also constructed to simulate a refugee camp.

The newly established Urban Warfare Training Center (unveiled to the press in 2007) also features. This is a mock city located in the southern Tze’elim military base. From a distance, it looks like any Arab urban centre. Built by the U.S.Army Corps of Engineers and funded largely through U.S. military aid, the 7.4-square-mile generic city consists of modules that can be reconfigured by mission planners to represent specific towns. Known as ‘Baladia’ by the Americans – balad, in Arabic, means village – it is used by U.S. forces as well as by the Israel Defense Force. Complete with shops, a grand mosque, a hospital and a Kasbah quarter, the UWTC even has a cemetery that doubles as a soccer field, depending on the operational scenario. In some of the houses openings have been created to replicate those that soldiers leave behind as they demolish walls in the process of moving through urban areas whilst avoiding streets and alleys. For added realism, charred automobiles and burned tyres litter the roadways. During training exercises Arabian music is played in the background. The facility is enveloped by cameras and an audio system that simulates helicopters, mortar rounds, and prayer calls.