Runways

(Hardback)

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Description

"Runways" addresses disappearance and death in sites of personal loss in Israel's landscape. These are images of ambivalent beauty, so close to both life and death. In these photographs, which she took with medium-format cameras, the photographer Naomi Leshem tells stories of disappearance and death. A road in the Arabah Desert where a young woman died in a motor-cycle accident. A place in the Negev Desert where, despite a twelve-hour trip by car, parents drive several times a year to mourn the loss of their son. Or the Sea of Galilee, where a military pilot lost control of his plane and crashed at top speed into the water's peaceful, deep blue surface. Leshem searched for such sites of disappearance and death. Like memento mori, they are symbols in the midst of life and its always incomplete transience.

Author Bio

Naomi Leshem was born in Jerusalem in 1963 and now lives and works in Tel Aviv, Israel. Since 1996, she has taught photography at several universities in Israel, including the College of Photography in Kiryat Ono and, from 1998 to 2005, the Israel Museum in Jerusalem. Her photographs are in private and public collections in Israel, the United States, and Europe and have been exhibited in Israel (Israel Museum Jerusalem, Tel Aviv Museum), New York and Vienna. Michael Guggenheimer is a freelance journalist and photographer in Zurich. Peter Rollin lives and works in Rapperswil-Jona, Switzerland, as a lecturer, journalist, researcher, art expert and curator.