Catalog of a Collection of Photographs by Gérard Allon in the Judaica Collection of the Harvard library

After over a hundred years of tumultuous existence in the Near East,
and sixty years of independence as a state, the multifaceted Israeli society
is still in conflict with itself, its identity, and its self-image, and this
condition necessarily deeply marks the local artistic creation. While
navigating between the acute memory of the Holocaust and the intricate
contemporary issues of security, including the unbearable living
conditions of the population in the territories and the separation wall
that is being built, artists seem to draw an inventory of the irreparable.
For contemporary Israeli artists, issues of human rights, racism, and
humanism are extremely concrete, even more so than for artists in
Western countries for whom these issues tend to be more theoretical,
more in the realm of “romanticism.” In the harsh reality of today’s Israel—with
the fear of the future, the faltering peace process, the entire
population in constant friction with the Palestinian nation, the threat
of terrorism that is an integral part of daily life—there is little room for
romanticism. The periodic wars, obligatory military service for much
of the population, and the constant threat to the existence of the nation,
leave little latitude for theory and philosophy. These burning issues
that preoccupy every citizen are even more vital to the artist.
Despite the inevitable traces of this situation in the artists’ work, in
many instances a first reading of their work does not reveal these concerns.
Each of these artists expresses his or her vision in a different—
overt or subdued—form. While some may tackle these issues in a
straightforward fashion, many others consciously avoid them and find
refuge in their imagination and inner world.
The multitude of tendencies and the unsettled pluralism are a symptom
of Israel’s undefined local culture. From its very beginning, Israel
has been essentially an immigrant society where a plethora of cultural
and artistic streams have converged from all over the world. This
environment did not favor the formation of a well-defined artistic tradition.
Although today’s Israel has ceased to be a country of immigration
in the traditional sense, it is still a melting pot. Nevertheless, it
now has also developed a strong and relatively well-established local
culture and artistic tradition that is robust enough to absorb and overpower
sporadic influences brought by immigration, with only some
mild side effects. Today, Israel still devotes major time, thought, and
energy to exploring the question of national identity through symposia
and philosophical discussions. There is no clear-cut answer as
to what constitutes Israeli national identity; and although over half a
century has passed, one still defines it through a process of elimination,
that is, by enumerating what Israeli identity is not.
Each language is a unique means of experiencing and expressing consciousness,
and each is culture-specific. It often happens that in order
to convey a specific idea or message, a combination of different languages
seems to be the most effective way. As a result of the geopolitical
situation, and of being the melting pot of a large variety of
cultures, Israel has invented a certain number of colloquial Hebrew
expressions such as korach hametziut necessity of reality or ein brera no
alternative, and many slogans such as am bematsor a nation under siege
or am besakanat hakhada a nation in danger of extermination, which
have become synonyms for Israelism and express the state of emergency
and urgency that prevails in the country. Today’s Hebrew also
clearly mirrors the younger generation’s search for identity, a new identity
that, having broken with the ethos of the heroic past of the pioneers,
is torn between two worlds. On one hand is the presence in the
Near East, to which the locally born generation feels it belongs, and
on the other hand is the everlasting desire to belong to the West. For
example, one of the most popular expressions used by the younger
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