Shabtai Pinchevsky

Info

I'm a photographer and digital media artist whose practice examines the politics of image-making in contested geographies, particularly Israel/Palestine. I work across 3D modeling, mapping, drone photography, and archival research to examine photography's entanglements with colonial and territorial politics. I'm an Assistant Professor of Photography at Parsons School of Design, The New School.

Artist Statement

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I'm a photographer and digital media artist whose research-driven practice investigates the politics of image-making in contested geographies, particularly in Israel/Palestine. Working across 3D modeling, mapping, drone photography, archival research, and computational media, I create augmented, site-specific representations that critically examine how photography not only contributed to Zionist colonial projects but was fundamentally shaped by the tasks it lent itself to.

Working in three-dimensional digital environments allows me to step outside photography's fixed perspective to study the medium's complications and entanglements with critical distance. At the same time, it is the use of my own voice and written texts that position me as an implicated actor within the territories I explore—formulating unabashed political and moral stances through images and words.

In my research projects, I often study and work with historical material, not to evoke nostalgia but to trace how past image-making practices inform present political entanglements. While I do not intend my works to resolve, I hope they serve, for audiences and me, as a small step in the long path of repair.

I'm committed to research as a practice of public engagement—where work invites scrutiny, debate, adaptation and use. This means structuring work to be contestable and usable rather than exclusive and performative. For me, research-engaged practice means making work that can participate in broader struggles and politics, rather than simply representing them.

My practice emerges from a deep personal reckoning. I hold a strong affinity for Israel—one that is a source of much shame. What concerns me, what drives my practice, is how deeply the logics of that place—settler colonialism, Jewish supremacy—shapes how I see and move through the world. For me, Anti-Zionism is not a fixed position but a trajectory, something I work towards rather than claim to fully inhabit. This ongoing project defines my most immediate audience: those who share that trajectory, those who must reckon with Zionist logics too. While I recognize the importance and impact of direct action against Israeli cultural institutions, I see my role in working to mobilize shame from within. I won't accept direct state funding, but I feel compelled to remain in conversation with that place and those who must reckon with it, even as each opportunity involves its own shame. I don't know what I'll decide the next time an opportunity arises, but I work to keep my voice and trajectory clear and sharp, creating work that will, I hope, participate in the inevitable work of dismantling Zionism in Israel/Palestine.

Contact

tai.shabtai@gmail.com / pinchevs@newschool.edu