Photography and History, Art and Graffiti
I took advantage of a few free hours yesterday to head out through parts of Beer Sheva I hadn’t walked through yet. With no particular goal in mind, I wandered north from the Ben Gurion University dorm past the fence on the east side of campus. Taking pictures, of course. If you’ve seen my photos, you know lots of things draw my attention. Often I focus on explicitly political topics, but at least as often I get into other things. Flowers, scenery, people. Patterns, shapes, shadows. Fences.
Yesterday I started with the BGU fence, and then the walkway to the train station, and construction workers. Then the huge construction crane where BGU is building a new Science and Technology building.
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That’s about when a campus security guard walked over from the entrance to ask why I was taking pictures. I wasn’t all that surprised. I showed him my campus ID and told him I was just walking around taking pictures, that I’m a visiting American (they kind of expect Americans to be clueless). He was good natured about it, especially since I was putting my camera away. I told him that without signs saying photography is forbidden, it’s hard to know where it’s okay and where it isn’t. He agreed and laughed.
I suspect this isn’t so much a matter of legal prohibition as security-guard suspicion. If I stood a group of tourists in front of the crane and took their picture, I doubt I’d be stopped. A lone person looking up is more unusual. I suppose the suspicion is not all that unreasonable — anything in the name of security, right? — but if I was really casing the place for a potential terrorist attack I’d hardly stand there taking my time with an unhidden camera when I could sit in a car a few blocks away with a telephoto lens. If I had a telephoto lens.
I continued north. On the way I noticed to the east the Palmach Brigade Memorial that stands on a hill over Beer Sheva. It’s visible from much of the city, and lit up at night.
I realized I might be able to get a closer look at the memorial, which I had read consisted of several artistic shapes, if I made my way through the new Ramot neighborhood. I had skirted the edge last Sunday when Jamal drove me to Rahat, but I hadn’t yet wandered with my camera.
Ramot, which means Heights, consists of several kinds of neighborhoods, all new and apparently designed for people with some money. That’s true for those who buy these new “Posh Villas and Cottages” –
– as well as for those moving into these new apartment buildings.
It’s all very pleasant, with quiet tree-lined streets, water-reliant lawns, more Florida-like than desert-like. It’s more suburban from other Beer Sheva neighborhoods I’ve been through, which it is separated from by a buffer of undeveloped land. But it is still, I gather, within the city limits, which I assume are expanding.
By this time in my walk I was already worn out, not having expected to be heading out into the sun for so long. But I was finally at Ramot’s edge, approaching the memorial. It turned out I couldn’t actually see it from the edge, though, because a small hill stood in between. I walked up the hill, which right now is a wasteland of rock and rubble, and suddenly realized I could not just see the memorial but could walk right to it.
So I did, wishing I had brought a little more water with me. I had to wander around to the entrance, since the side nearest me had barbed wire around it. But there this sign explained the memorial’s significance.
I’ve commented before on Israel’s ever-present memorials to its pioneering and military past, which I interpreted much differently during my teenage and young-adult Zionist years 35 or 40 years ago than I do today. Today these memorials to heroism and patriotism strike a more sour note, reflecting both my more critical take on Israel’s history as well as my generalized distaste for monuments to militarism and nationalism regardless of the country involved.
Perhaps the most useful thing memorials such as these accomplish is to clarify the degree to which a nation’s founding myths reflect the perspective of the winners. The use of symbolic shapes reflecting strength, the blending of art and power, the solemnity of the location — all this and more evoke emotions easily reached in those who accept the fundamentals. These days, though, I wonder more about the emotions of those whose own experience and memory don’t quite match those of the victors.
But I appreciated the shade.
On my way back through Ramot toward the university, I found some signs of discontent amidst the apparently affluent.
Is there much police brutality in Beer Sheva? Does it target kids in fashionable Ramot? I don’t know? And why is this graffiti only in English? Are the writers American youth disaffected by their immigration? Young Israelis practicing their English?
Reasonable sentiments, in any case.
Continuing my trek through the sun I finally reached Shkunah Dalet, the older run-down neighborhood between the entrance to Beer Sheva and the west entrance to the university. Stopped for falafel. And reached my office in time for my Arabic lesson,