Jerusalemites through the lens

Jerusalem is usually documented through its stones: the Western Wall, the spires, the walls. These images of the city – eternal, monumental – accompanied my previous books. My new book Jerusalemites seeks to shift the gaze from the symbols to the living fabric – from the myth to the reality.

The perspective presented here is that of a native son, from a family whose roots run generations deep in this city. It is a gaze formed by living in the city, not by visiting it.

A gaze that rests on a continuous familiarity with the rhythm of the street, with slow changes and recurrences, with people who pass through and people who stay.

Street photography in Jerusalem is a complicated matter. The camera is present in a charged space: religions, identities, political tensions and social divides. And yet, within this complexity there are moments that do not seek to represent anything. Two nuns, a woman in a hijab with her children and a baby stroller, an ultra-Orthodox man – all at the same gate of the Old City, in the same moment, breathing in the smell of the same bagel.