Eddie Gerald, Israel
Roadblocks

"Closure”, “Blockade” or “Breathing Barriers". The terms coined by the Israeli government do not matter. Many roads in the Occupied Territories are blocked to Palestinian residents. The Israeli closure forced on the Palestinian Territories since the beginning of the Aqsa Intifada in late September 2000 has restricted the ability of Palestinians to travel, work and go to school to a degree unprecedented in the 42-year occupation of the West Bank. The internal closure separates Palestinian localities from each other and results in the hampering or complete freezing of the economic political, educational, medical and social service activities necessary for a healthy society. Such a separation of the Palestinian Territories is achieved through the use of roadblocks, checkpoints, military patrols, as well as destroying the roads themselves, all built upon the skeletons of the Jewish settlements.

Ami Steinitz
Curator Statement

What is there to capture at the height of a so-called "Low Intensity War"? How can one weigh the minute daily realities imposed upon people caught between contradicting powers? Routine, even a difficult one, tends to get normalised and become accepted. The roadblock is not a source of a warfare headlines. It is not a suicide explosion, a shooting, or a battle scene. It is a conflict peripheral zone; a man-made illusion of a security measurement. But this margin post embodies a focal point that imposes an eye-to-eye contact between the two opposing sides. It is a point that compels people to behave as minor actors in a greater drama. They are becoming representatives of their clashing cultures, resolves and values. It is the definite point of otherness, but it is also a place that performs passage of barriers and the erosion of blocks. In the midst of this imposed encounter, Eddie Gerald is installing his camera as a human-scale seismic compass.

His black and white technique installs the uniformed versus the civilian's confrontational perimeter, but simultaneously searches for feasible greys. The physician’s work, children’s smiles behind shuttered car glass, both existing and missing appearances of hands and faces - these minor seismic grey motions instilled between black and white limits, embodies an exploration within a political barrier. It documents an ever-occurring historic hopelessness as chiseled by photography out of reality-rugged rocks, presenting a testament of humankind. These seismic images might not affect political agendas but may inscribe one more unforgettable sense of value on our cultural horizon. These valuable photographic inscriptions are a result of a meticulous photojournalist being a witness, a dedicated personal attendance that uses the camera to draw a meaningful human story.

Conflicts tend to brutally affect human reality. Documented testimonies not only tells a story. They activate a global watch that will not be present without the documenter, without the creative talent that can alarm world perception. No rules establish this point of alarm. There is only a sensitive frame taken by a dedicated witness at a crucial moment.