jerusalem in exile, tangible memories

A renewed perception of Jerusalem 

Steve Sabella

Images are part of our reality and often we observe the world through images; we, in fact, filter life through them. Often we describe events resorting to images stored in our minds. When we remember things, we tend to remember them in the form of an image. This image is actually the very memory that undergoes stages of editing by which some details are dropped or changed. Reality becomes entrapped or defined in images. It would be interesting to note how memory changes form one generation to another. Roland Barthes writes that an “image is re-presentation, which is to say ultimately resurrection....”[i] Mental images are agents of memory. They help us to remember [ii]. We often store them, and naturally we tend to forget their virtual presence because of their quantity, but when confronted with a need to remember something, memories flash back and stored images are resurrected with their details transmitted.  We also recollect memories when we see something that resembles a particularly stored image in our mind. We live in a world of images, and often factual images interact with mental images because of similarities, in effect, triggering the process of memory.

Countless images are stored in our brain. Because of their quantity, many loose importance by time. We also feel that some loose their meaning. A journey to unravel one of the images (when we decide to remember something) will make this particular image stronger than other ones. We will place it in a different brain compartment and it will become a thought suspended. It will struggle to come to light. In the Jerusalem in exile project, I would like for an image of Jerusalem that dwells in your mind to be recollected and described in words.  Subsequently, these words will be transformed again into a photographic image, as I will try to get the inspiration and direction from these words to create that image. Once the two unite, the word and the recreated image, people will look at both with new eyes. If we are to look at the image below, many would say it is a photograph of a house. The image might trigger some feelings and thoughts. However, if I am to add that this house is Shadiya's family house, which the family could not return to because it was seized by Israeli settlers in 1967, and that Shadiya goes to gaze at this lost house once a week, as it reminds her of her father and childhood memories, we will look at it and assess it differently. The connotations are multiplied. John Berger writes that the “meaning of an image is changed according to what one sees immediately beside it or what comes immediately after it. Such authority as it retains, is distributed over the whole context in which it appears”. [iii] Words and Images work mystically together to influence and change our perception.

Barthes writes that we are a civilization of writing and speech. There is a linguistic message present in every image as title, caption, and film dialogue etc... Movies for instance cannot be watched without words. All images are also polysemous—have multiple meaning where the understanding of these meanings depends on the context the images are used in [iv]. The same image could mean different things to different people. However, some meanings have universal understandings.  A tomato could signify to some simply a tomato, to others, salad, and to some spaghetti sauce. The Jerusalem in exile project will result in creating an assemblage of images and words. Depending on the text that will be presented next to the image, we will be looking at images that were a transformation of personal experiences described in words. Hence, the images and words will be of an intimate nature. Memories are always unique and personal, and this will effectively empower the images, as opposed to images of Jerusalem that our eyes are accustomed to seeing. Barthes writes that texts help one to choose the correct level of perception. They permit one to focus, not simply the gaze but also the understating [v].

What makes photography—the drawing with light—unique, and what distinguishes the work of one photographer from the millions of other people who take millions of photos on any given day? It is remarkable that by pressing the camera’s button an image is produced in less than a second! Kant writes that in painting usually a painter establishes a relation to his work. A painter reflects, feels, and he knows what he is going to do. In contrast, often people who photograph find themselves surprised when they see the results of what they photographed, and this happens mainly because they do not share a relationship with their subject matter. They mainly develop a relationship to the subject matter after they see the images [vi]. In general this leads to photographs that are less intriguing in essence. Then, how should people develop a relationship with things they photograph in one second? As A matter of fact, for people who use the photographic medium for artistic expression, this second, is a long process of inner thought and feeling that struggle internally. Only when the two converge—that is, when the photographer (artist) feels he is ready and capable to make his thoughts and feelings come to light, does he search for the closest physical materialization of what dwells in his mind. It is a journey from the sub-consciousness where mental images travel to the consciousness and eventually seek to satisfy itself with an image of perceived resemblance. This, in effect, distinguishes art photography from normal photographs. In this regard, because the photographer looks for something in particular, he most often is not surprised when he sees the results. The relationship has been established beforehand with the subject. One feels that the photographer has made a choice and feels the relationship between what is photographed and the photographer [vii].  There is no doubt that this is why we gaze more at certain images. We feel a choice has been taken, and a relationship has been established which all lead to a personal touch just like the touch painters have in their paintings. 

Some photographs animate us and we in return animate them. In doing so an adventure is created. Some will animate us, because we will realize something we did not before [viii]. Looking at current photographs of Jerusalem, there is nothing rare, and elements of surprise are deficient. The latter two constitute some of the elements of a successful image.  When we come back from a holiday, and develop or download the images, we sense a liking to many of the images. It happens because something new has been photographed. However, these photos for the local inhabitants will be nothing of the extra ordinary. Something else will make us cherish them—they will remind us of good times. Sontag even writes that they act as a proof that the holiday happened and fun was made [ix]. We often show the photos to friends and tell them the story behind the making of these photos. It is the telling of the story that helps our friends to realize why that particular photographed moment meant something to us or is of memorable importance. I am not suggesting approaching Jerusalem from a tourist point of view; I am just implying that the story behind an image is what makes a certain image memorable. Only when our friends know the story, they as outsiders who did not join the trip, will they understand our relationship to the image. That image is clearly more than one second of time, as it might symbolize the whole trip.

“Ultimately, Photography is subversive not when it frightens, repels, or even stigmatizes, but when it is pensive, when it thinks “.[x] A mere simple tourist photograph does not evoke feelings, or sentiments to those who know Jerusalem very well—it does not think. Jerusalem is universal, and a hard subject matter. Hence, it would be extremely hard to renew concepts or fresh perceptions of the city. According to Barthes, tourist images might not satisfy what he refers to as the “espirit de finesse”. They feel more visitable than habitable [xi]. Visitable has an end connotation in its meaning. We visit a place; there is a time frame, a beginning and an end. There is also a chance that we might not visit or come back to the place. Visiting also deprives us of discovering the more intimate details of life in that particular place, the city, and its people as we do not live there or only stay there briefly. In contrast habitable has a connotation of life in its meaning. Once, we live somewhere and transform that place into a home, we start to feel it, live it and become part of it. It is that feeling that we lack when looking at photos of Jerusalem today. They don’t offer us the feeling of habitable. They are more visitable. However, by transforming the memories and the imaginings of people into photographs, only then will we look at images of Jerusalem and feel them habitable. Photos of Jerusalem could mean nothing to many people as they could be indifferent pictures, ones of thousands of manifestations of the ordinary. Once a relationship is realized, and once it is realized by viewers, these pictures transform to images with meanings and value.

We look at images differently once we know their background. Banal images could suddenly transform into something that triggers a higher level of thought. A certain image that depicts space in it could have few connotations; however, these connotations will multiply if one knows that the image was created by a prisoner who serves a life sentence and the judge allowed him to breathe fresh air for few hours. We will value the image differently, and our sense of space will be heightened.

The same would apply for images of Jerusalem. We have seen thousands of images of the city and it becomes hard to renew our perception of it. But, when one knows that a photograph is actually the photographic re-creation of a mental image of Jerusalem as held in an individual’s memory, and through which we can experience his private and personal thoughts, something new comes to light.

Barthes begins his book Camera Lucida with a photograph that shows Jerome, Napoleon’s younger brother, taken in 1852. He realized that he was looking at eyes that looked at the Emperor himself [xii]. Jerusalem in exile will offer the opportunity for many Palestinians to materialize mental images. In a way, once we will be looking at the images, we will be actually looking at Jerusalem through the eyes of these people. We will be offered the chance to discover hidden thoughts, memories, and also intimate details that these contributors have preserved in their mind of Jerusalem. 

Jerusalem has been photographed, probably, more than any other city in the world.  It has also been documented in innumerable books. There is hardly anything new a photographer can add. I feel Jerusalem needs visual liberation. This can only be achieved if a new dimension is added to the photographs. This dimension exists in us, deep in the imagination. Reaching that dimension requires a deep look, a journey into the minds of many people; where they will all unite to ‘rebuild’ and ‘reconstruct’ Jerusalem.

Jerusalem is in exile; it exists somewhere in the sky. When people are in exile, they usually live in a different country. There they have two options: to mingle with the people, or to always have a passion for their homeland. Jerusalem has been exiled but no other country accepted it. It has found a refuge in the minds of the people who remember it. It has been transformed to a memory, to an image.  Through the help of the little camera lens, which will open for a less than a second, we will voyage back in time, like flash of light; we will go back to a Jerusalem that dwells in minds and imaginings. The process will give meaning to photos, recover and also revive them [xiii].

What interests me is not the preservation of memory and evidence, nor the idealizing of mental images; I am interested in what this experience will trigger on a personal level for each one of us. We all have memories, but how often do we recollect them? In recollecting them we might discover things that we missed through time. Photography can be the bridge through which this memory could be re-accessed. Photography will help resurrect these memories and bring them back to life. We will be able to interact with what is hidden. When I materialize these memories, photography will not replace the memory as is often feared [xiv]. It will simply connect us to it. Think of it as the train that takes us from one destination to another. It does not constitute the origin or the destination; it is simply the vehicle. Without the train the journey is longer, and we might get lost on the way. It is the train that transports us and it is the photography that will help trigger these memories and imagination so that they reach a destination. This destination is our renewed perception of Jerusalem.