Ethan Eisenberg

Holyland

August 6, 2009 - August 31, 2009

In Holyland, Ethan Eisenberg photographed the Gaza Strip, an area affected by the 1993 Israel-PLO peace accord. The photographs in this exhibition are from an extended personal project carried out from 1994-2005 in the contested areas of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. Concentrating on the routines and rituals of daily life more than the actual violence, the photographs describe how both Israeli and Palestinian society have been shaped by their position in a shared culture of territorial conflict.

Eisenberg states, “Rather than photographing from the perspective of support for one side or the other, I have attempted to describe a collective culture of territorial struggle, a continuous state of competition where every aspect of public life, from physical appearance to participation in public gatherings, becomes an assertion of identity and difference.”