ABSTRACT
Since the time they were conquered, and increasingly over the past two decades, the Occupied Territories have become an extended photography studio that can spread at any given moment to more and more areas, including private homes. The presence of Palestinians in those homes does not constitute an obstacle for the photographers milling about the studio; it affords the grounds and opportunity for their being there. There are countless more photographers roaming the studio than “ordinary” areas, and the local inhabitants are far more exposed to their activity than is the average citizen a few kilometers away. 1
This is a flexible, modular, temporary studio that keeps pace with military operational activity and settlers’ movements. It sets up in places that have been invaded for varying durations, sometimes for relatively lengthy periods, but mostly temporarily, for a limited and fleeting time, until the phenomenon that prompted it to be set up fades or disappears, interest in it is lost, the army packs up and leaves, or else the photographer is simply ousted from the area. The disbandment of the photographers who had been staying in one corner of the studio is always transitory, and is not evidence that this studio without borders has been closed forever. The studio continues to exist in this fashion so long as the separation between private and public space in the Occupied Territories is violently transgressed. The existence of a photography studio across an entire territory attests to the flawed civil status of the population residing in that territory. This flawed status is illustrated by the fact that Palestinians can be regularly photographed, at different hours of the day, in various life situations, within the boundaries of public space and no less so within the boundaries of their private space, which likewise becomes accessible to any cameras that happen to be around.
