Sunday, May 11, 2008

Standing on Guard in a Bad Neighbourhood

Rachel Papo is an American photographer who when she was 18 was inducted/drafted into the Israeli army. In her new exhibition/book, Serial No. 3817131, she returns to photograph young Israeli women also doing their mandatory army service. Below is an except of her artist's statement.

Almost fifteen years after my mandatory military duty ended, I went back to several Israeli army bases, using the medium of photography as a vehicle to re-enter this world. Serial No. 3817131 represents my effort to come to terms with the experiences of being a soldier from the perspective of an adult. My service had been a period of utter loneliness, mixed with apathy and pensiveness, and at the time I was too young to understand it all. Through the camera’s lens, I tried to reconstruct facets of my military life, hopeful to reconcile matters that had been left unresolved.

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