This exhibition aims to direct our gaze to the network of connections between people and place, and to a very specific place: the urban neighborhood in Israel.
Urban and architectural design do not stand on their own. They are inextricably linked to politics, the economy, sociology and psychology, and are responsible for creating and shaping the “place” that is the setting for the daily routine of millions of people, from the most intimate level – room and home – to yard and street, and all the way up to public institutions. As such, the products of that design function on the one hand as a “background” to the activity and occurrences of life, while at the same time wielding influence on them; but because that influence is perceived as “background,” it does not get the attention it deserves. Whereas research about identity and identification frequently relates to different reference groups in life –ethnic community, religious affiliation, gender, nationality, social class – “place” is accorded a far less central status, even though the relationship between an individual and his surroundings is one of the most significant in life.
In its first decades, Israel was a singular case of urban planning, on a global scale, due to the unprecedented surges in its population growth within a short period, immediately after its establishment. That vast mass of people required housing, and fast. The result was block-like public housing projects, rows of uniform structures, which were replicated across the country, from north to south, and dominated the urban space in Israel for decades afterward. This housing model is replete with all the issues of domestic Israeli politics, above all the ethnic-class issue: Ashkenazim-Mizrahim, connected-excluded. The neighborhood is the product of a specific human culture, and as such it reproduces the balance of forces within that culture. A large part of the block neighborhoods in the country’s periphery suffered from a negative reputation, stigmatized as zones of distress and crime. But as the years passed, and millions of children who grew up in these neighborhoods became adults and were scattered across the whole spectrum of Israeli society, different voices began to be heard, radically different from the prevailing stereotype. These voices attested to positive, warm, emotional attachments to the neighborhood, its residents and its institutions, and to a feeling of solidarity, closeness and belonging to the neighborhood community. From this perspective, the neighborhood is not only the “place” of the community; in large measure it builds the community.
The image of and occupation with the neighborhood as territory that plays a role in private and general history, is found in the work of some of the major figures in the local art scene, particularly from the 1990s onward, and especially, though not only, in the field of photography. These works convey the look of the everyday, unexceptional, characterless surroundings, which are often drab and neglected; but the artist’s singular point of view, like that of the viewers, who bring their own private residue of emotions, transforms them before our eyes into the intimate and familiar “place” that they are. The story of the Israeli neighborhood testifies above all to the force life possesses to burst out of the disparity between conception and reality, and to reshape the place and its story. The present exhibition assembles a group of works from the Haaretz Collection that refer to this turning point and give rise to thoughts about the significance of the residential environment, the part played by the neighborhood in creating a community and in grounding feelings of identity and belonging, about the influence of the neighborhood on the people who dwell in it – but no less about how they influence it.
