Round-trip Ticket: Tel-Aviv-Beersheba 2005

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On the first trip, I stayed in the capital of the Negev over 6 hours. I walked across the city equipped with my camera. On the second trip, I already knew that it would be a round-trip ticket only, no staying over. I’m a passer-by. I will not pretend to be a resident of the Negev or a tourist. I’m a photographer.

I looked through the window. As a child in France, I loved to stare through the window to discover the changes that have been taking place between Paris and Southern France.

Sometimes I pick up my camera. The window serves as a filter in addition to the one of the camera itself and frames the reality for me. Reflections increase the emotional distance between the galloping landscape and me.

Yet I am impressed by the space unfolding before me. Sometimes the reality emerges in a strange, quick, leap at my eyes, like a scary clown that jumps out of the box. Public buildings, violent constructions, neglected areas. Eventually they become a kind of an x-ray of reality. The speed, the window and the camera protect me. I can maintain a political, social, emotional distance. Is that so?

France Lebée-Nadav

Free translation From “Southern Women: Space ,Periphery and Gender,” edited by Henriette Dahan-Kalev, Nitza Berkowitz and Nitza Yanai, Ben-Gurion University and Xargol Books. 2005