In the photographs of Rula Halawani, the daily political reality of life in Palestine is represented. The artist creates and captures images that represent the changes and experiences of Palestinians. The artist suggests, “I am a working artist — a photographer living and working in an intensely political environment…The question of doing ‘political art’ is not a question in the Palestinian context. Our whole existence is so overwhelmingly defined at every level by our political circumstances.” Halawani has worked on numerous series of photographs that capture the transformation of the Palestinian environment in the current political period, from the perspective of someone who has lived through and experienced those changes.
Two of Halawani’s most recent series of photographs are ‘Intimacy’ and ‘Irrational.’ Interestingly, the titles are personal and suggestive of close physical and emotional relationship to place. The paradox however, is that what we have in these series are images which document the presence and encounter with representations of the power of the state, in the form of checkpoints, soldiers, and settlements — an anonymous face but one that epitomizes the inequality of power.
