Rubble.
When Stephen Eric Bronner, Professor of Political Science at Rutgers University, spoke to a conference on Palestine at the University of Minnesota in April 2004, his message boiled down to one word: Rubble.
Bronner had just returned from a fact-finding trip to Israel/Palestine, where he had a chance to view the aftermath of “Operation Defensive Shield,” the euphemistic name given to Ariel Sharon’s brutal 2002 invasion of Palestinian communities throughout the West Bank.
“People would ask me to describe in a sentence what I had seen,” recalled Bronner. “I would tell them that I don’t need a sentence — I can sum it up in a single word.”
Rubble.
I found myself thinking of Bronner’s observation this week as I viewed a powerful new photographic exhibition at La Boca del Lobo, a cultural center in the Lavapies neighborhood of Madrid. Titled Mirando a Palestina: Proyecciones Fotograficas (Looking towards Palestine: Photographic Projections), the one-week exhibit brought together a diverse group of photographers.
Most striking, however, are the images produced by Rula Halawani, a Birzeit University professor and freelance photographer. In a series of photos titled “Negative Incursion,” Halawani uses negative images to document the 2002 Israeli invasion. The result is ghostly and nightmarish: a dark world of devastation that bears a striking and disturbing similarity to the sorts of images produced through the “night vision” goggles that give the U.S. military an advantage over its poorly-equipped foes. Halawani’s decision to employ negative black-and-white images leaves the viewer wondering whether the images were shot in 2002 or 1982 or 1948. Which is precisely the point: the nightmare continues.
