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.
In Anti-Mapping, a collaborative project with photographer Miki Kratsman, we’re looking at the surface of the Earth as a photographic surface and a record-keeper. Our aim is to produce geographical documentation of the ongoing displacement of Palestinian and Bedouin communities throughout the territories governed by the State of Israel.
Our documentation serves as an alternative to the restrictive visibility enforced by the Israeli government, which limits civilian access to maps and satellite imagery of the land. The resolution limit that Israeli aerial photography is subject to, does not allow for the gathering of geographical evidence on these places, which further obstructs the ability to document their history. By using drone photography and photogrammetry techniques, we have produced aerial views at a resolution that renders every rock, cinder block, grave, and more, at their finest detail, enabling a forensic study of the Earth, as a testimony to the atrocities endured by these communities.
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 feel compelled to remain in conversation with that place and those who must reckon with it, even as each opportunity involves its own shame.
In this article, Noam Gal pays tribute to Allan Sekula’s essay “The Body and the Archive” (1986), analyzing the creative practice of two contemporary camera artists, Tomoko Sawada and Shabtai Pinchevsky, and the various social concerns their works evoke.
Can a Self-Driving Car Navigate an Apatheid Road will be screened at the Artport Artist Film Festival in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.
The First Trail will be exhibited as part of Counter Landscape, curated by Karmit Galili, at Magasin III in Jaffa.