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Photography in Israel (review)

This thematic issue of a journal edited at Linacre College in Oxford combines a select historical portfolio of Israeli photography with an array of essays approaching the subject from various perspectives. Nir is a professor of visual communication at the Hebrew University. Nir's own opening essay is concerned with Holy Land photographic images from the nineteenth century. In one episode, villagers shown their picture failed to recognize themselves in it, as "a photograph seems to have connoted a ruler or other notable figure, the most likely subjects of any photographs they may have seen" (p. 185), "overshadow[ing] the perception of the referential link between a photograph and its subject." Nir contextualizes such patterns of interaction within Western "paternalist and appropriating relationship towards the Orient" (p. 193). Orna and Micha Bar-Am's paper, "The Illustrator E. M. Lilien as Photographer" in the Holy Land, reveals a littleknown side of an artist whose etchings and Jugendstil Biblical illustrations feature prominently in the history of modern Jewish art. Jugendstil and Bible is invariably Lilien. "Lilien's most famous photograph is generally not associated with his name or with his biblical project. It is the image of Zionist leader Theodor Herzlleaning on the balcony of the Drei Konige Hotel in Basel, Switzerland, and gazing over the Rhine" (p. 198). (As an aside: such is the instant recognition this image prompts, that when, recently, the Shas party openly adopted Zionism, a cartoon in the Jerusalem Post glossed the event by placing on the head of the leaning Herzl a Charedi wide-brimmed hat. It was a glaring evocation of that photograph, but did you know it was taken by Lilien?) In "Zionist Photography, 1910-41: Constructing a Landscape," Ruth Oren deals with pictures that were mainly published by the Jewish National Fund and the Keren Hayesod. Photography, indeed, is an important tool for overt propaganda, as well as a medium for subtle conceptualizations which assert an idea rhetorically, whether the photographer is aware or not (cf. e.g. the interesting but, in treating his data, unquestionably anti-Israeli essay by Derek Gregory, "Imaginative Geographies," in Progress in Human Geography, Vol. 19, No. 4[1995]: 447-485). The next essay is by Nir's colleague at the Hebrew University, Prof. Erik Cohen: "The Representation ofArabs and Jews on Postcards in Israel." An otherwise interesting subject is unfortunately spoilt by ebullient theory and an ideological ax to grind, by vociferously demonizing anti-Israeli proclamations, and by an academically inexcusable inattention to his data. Counterexamples probably could be found, but the argument is generally weak. He fails to consider, further to the Jewish vs. Arab dichotomy in life