2011: barbed wire in jerusalem outside the jerusalem/bethlehem checkpoint.
Photographer Claire Schwartz explores both sides of the Israeli West Bank Barrier and the Bethlehem/Jerusalem checkpoint in her series entitled israel.checkpoint.palestine.
Schwartz describes her photographs as a form of visual activism and social justice. “For me, art is all about my politics,” she says. “It is a way of being creative and expressing things that are political.”
(To see more of Claire Schwartz’s photographs, visit the Tikkun Daily Art Gallery or explore the artist’s site.)
2012: "come and feel the glory of israel" a poster reads in a waiting area of the checkpoint between jerusalem and bethlehem.
Schwartz’s photographs evoke the stark differences in life on both sides of the wall. One photograph depicts a nationalistic poster saying, “Come and feel the glory of Israel.” Situated on the Israel side of the checkpoint, the poster is one of the first things a person sees when crossing the border. People entering the West Bank or Israel must move through this space, Schwartz points out, so the poster has a fixed propaganda purpose. “I think it really requires that you implicate your own identity as you’re passing through this,” she says, adding that a Jewish American tourist, an Israeli soldier, or a Palestinian entering Israel will each have a very different experience passing through the checkpoint and looking at that poster.
The photo series was inspired by Schwartz’s own complicated experience of going through the checkpoint. She says:
The ways that you’re sort of systematically forced to identify are kind of in conflict with the ways that I wanted to identify. I was a Jew with an American passport, so I was moved really quickly through the checkpoint. At the same time there was a whole group of Palestinian people who was getting held up and being checked. My experience was a lot easier, a lot smoother, I was treated a lot better. That felt unjust. I feel we are deliberately being kept out of conversation.
Schwartz, a recent graduate of Williams College, started making this series after finishing a postgraduate fellowship in South Africa at the Economic Policy Research Institute. With no obligations tying her down, she decided to travel and explore. She flew to Israel and decided to visit a friend in the occupied West Bank.
Schwartz remembers noticing the juxtaposition between her extreme mobility at that point in her life and the limited mobility available to Palestinians in their country. Also, her prior experience in South Africa greatly increased her interest in this site and the photograph series.
“Having been also in post-apartheid South Africa I’d just been thinking a lot about the way movement is racialized, and available to certain people based on race or nationality,” she says. But she is careful to clarify that she does not see the situation in Israel as equivalent to South African apartheid. When people “map other political situations onto it, like apartheid or segregation in the United States,” it is doing a disservice to the true issue, she says.
Schwartz had been to Israel once before on a family vacation but her family, a large group of American Jews, stayed on the Israel side of the wall. Upon her return, she visited a friend in the West Bank and began to question the way spaces are marked and how identity plays a large role in the way one passes through the checkpoint.
Although she said there is no didactic message behind her series, Schwartz says she ultimately wants “people to stop and think” about how “everyone doesn’t necessarily have equal access to all of these spaces and they don’t mean the same thing because of the kinds of movements that are restricted.” She believes the Occupation needs to stop, but recognizes the complications and intricacies behind the issue.
Schwartz draws photographic inspiration from the candid quality of photos taken by Elinor Carucci, an Israeli-American photographer. “I think she doesn’t put that much distance between the camera and the way she lives,” Schwartz says.
Her second influence is Anton Kusters, who is working on a project that involves traveling to Nazi Concentration Camps, lying on the ground at each camp, taking a photograph of the sky, and putting the photographs into a mosaic. “There’s no way that you would visually be able to identify that these are from concentration camps,” Schwartz says. “You have to trust him as an artist, and his word and what he’s showing you.”
Schwartz strongly identifies with this idea that viewers must trust the artist and the experience to allow themselves to enter it. There is a mutual respect and confidence that must take place in order for understanding to occur.
She is currently working with her grandfather, an amateur photographer, on a series entitled The whole world is a village. Together they are combining some of her grandfather’s old family photos and some of her own photos into a mixed media collage. This series can be found on her website.
2011: a jewish women prays at ha kotel.
To see more of Claire Schwartz’s photographs, visit the Tikkun Daily Art Gallery or explore the artist’s site.
Te difference: Israel is a successful, technologically advanced state. The Palestinians have only succeeded in the popularity contest by whining for 63 years
BTW young lady, Israel is no SOuth Africa. Even your senior, Jimmy the Scumbag Carter backed off from that claim
This is the kind of disrespectful and abusive language that should not be allowed on our website. It’s fine to disagree strongly, but language like “Jimmy the Scumbag” is demeaning and hurtful.
Claire clearly states that the Occupation in Israel is NOT apartheid in South Africa, as you will see in the article:
“But she is careful to clarify that she does not see the situation in Israel as equivalent to South African apartheid. When people ‘map other political situations onto it, like apartheid or segregation in the United States,’ it is doing a disservice to the true issue, she says.”
Apartheid is the name that fits, wther South Africa, USA or Israel, wherever intermarriage is forbidden, schools are sgregated, commercce is prohibitively taxed, regulated or disallowed between tribes or peoples, especially when both are citizens, and land grabs are common.
The attendent, superflouos violence which the Palestinians suffer,and the assembly of a WALL that attaches land that is in dispute, are other harbingers of hatred and apartheid.
I am glad that this art exists, is shared and I hope that someday it will be superceded by photos of belonging and shared positively powerful existence.
Aminah
Arab Israel citizens have political representation in Israel and equal access to health care, educate and social services.. Palestinian plight in the Wets Bank and Gaza has been a result of the refusal by to recognize Israel as a Jewish state.
BTWm, nearly 20,000 have been slaughtered in Syria in the fight to have political and human rights rights.
Aminah, there would be no wall if there no suicide bombers.Thin about it next time you go to a mall or climb ion a bus
As for Apartheid, you have a very shallow understanding of the term. Arab citizens of Israel have full rights, political representation and equal access t health care and education.. Next store, in Syria, Arabs are being killed by the thousands so they can have any civil rights. next time yu demonize Israel or tyne US, think about the Arab world.
I suggest you step out of your glass house before someone sites you as a hypocrite.
Violence is good when we are protecting ourselves from those evil people.
Violence is bad when those evil people are killing us.
That is the religion that is shared by enemies across the wall.
Of that religion, I am an unbeliever
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