Houses (31°23′30.67″N 35°6′44.45″E), Palestine, 2012-15
The series is a documentation of a Palestinian village called Susya. It was established in the 1830s, and a religious communal Israeli settlement under the jurisdiction of Har Hebron Regional Council was established in 1983.
The Palestinian community has a population of 250 residents as of 2013. The Israeli settlement, on 1,800 dunams of land, had a population of 737 in 2006.
Susya, whether it refers to the site of the synagogue or the ruins of the large ancient settlement of some 60 dunams (1 dunam =1000 m2), is not mentioned in any ancient text, and Jewish literature failed to register an ancient Jewish town on that site.
Susya, as my guide told me, is the village famous for its resistance as it encourages all other villages in the area to stay in place.
Here architecture appears as a symbol of resistance in the occupied Palestinian territories, disrupted by the constant construction of new settlements in spite of the fact that in the Palestinian territories land is already too scarce to live on comfortably.
The houses (which there aren’t many of) are sturdy as they are made of bricks or concrete. However, they are made to look like temporary structures or tents in order to appear ephemeral and in flux.
The land of the Palestinians ends where the house ends. It is dangerous for them to go out into the fields into the proximity of thesettlers. Children are frequently attacked on their way to school when passing near Israeli settlements. The environments of Palestinian houses are no-go areas, are non-spaces.
Palestine has been continuously recorded from the very beginning of photography. In 1849, Maxime du Camp was one of the first to make a systematic photographic survey of monuments, ruins and landscapes in the middle east, including Palestine. Today the political question of the territory and how it is represented is more acute than ever, and photography brings a crucial contribution to an awareness of what it is to inhabit a contested and damaged landscape.
When the painter Delacroix visited North Africa in 1832, he saw Greek and Roman Antiquity in the folds and drapery of the people’s garments. He was seeing the classical past of art history in the present.
To take pictures of these houses in Susya is akin to taking a portrait. The houses of Susya are covered with tarpaulin so that they are concealed from view. And the tarpaulins resemble drapery. These contemporary folds have a new currency: they have migrated from classical art to the present day of these Palestinians dwellings. Acting as camouflage in a zone of conflict, this contemporary form of drapery acquires now an unexpected political and subversive meaning.
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