Once a week, sometimes more, we used to travel to the Alexander Zaid’s Hills, a walking distance from our home. By foot or on the back of a donkey, we climbed, as the view of the Jezreel Valley spread before our eyes. The best time was just before the sun disappeared behind the Carmel mountain, as the last rays of light painted the fields in golden tones. We sat there for hours, 20 kilometers from Nazareth and a short ride distance from the Mediterranean Sea, surrounded by green spiky sabras, played music, drank Turkish coffee, watched the wind blow clouds away and stars revealing the night sky while breathing the sweet air of our childhood's landscape.
Photographed over seven years, “Shikun-Ella” is a documentary project about a place that has provided the backdrop for my youth, about a rural neighborhood in Kiryat Tivon, in northern Israel. Captured in color photographs, the project shows my family’s daily life as it reveals the dynamics of individuals with each other, and with the environment around us. It also shows how people have changed over the years, how their identities shaped, and how they faced these changes in moments of solitude. The photographed landscape, which is my first association with home, family, and love, represents a different way of life, which endures and still exists. It is not a project about the political conflict, Jerusalem or Gaza, but an insight into a different version of Israel, about what happens outside the mainstream media’s bubble.
For us, this land transmits calmness and peace.
