 Good evening. Welcome everybody to the Brooklyn Museum. My name is Cora Michael. I'm Associate Curator of Exhibitions, and I'm the Organizing Curator of this place. We're very pleased to have you with us tonight for a very special event. As you probably know, this place was conceived by Frederick Brenner and curated by Charlotte Cotton. The exhibition explores Israel and the West Bank through the eyes of 12 international photographers. We are very lucky to have three of the artists who participated in the project with us tonight to speak. That's, we'll have Frederick Brenner, Rosalind Fox Solomon, and Thomas Struth on stage with Jeff Rosenheim, moderating the discussion. I should also say that we're very pleased that we have eight additional artists from the exhibition and project with us tonight here at the opening, several of whom will be participating in subsequent programs here at the museum. Jeff Rosenheim is curator in charge of the photographs department at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and he's the perfect person to lead this discussion, not only due to his scholarly credentials and deep knowledge of both contemporary photography and the history of photography, but because he served as a consulting curator during the early stages of this place, working with the photographers while they were in residence in Israel, and playing a formative role in the development of the project. At the Met, where he has worked since 1988, Jeff has curated numerous beautiful and thought-provoking exhibitions, including Walker Evans, and photography and the American Civil War. He's published countless essays and catalogs on American photography, and facilitated the acquisition of two major photographic archives for the Met, that of Walker Evans and Diane Arbus. He has several exciting exhibitions in the works that I'll briefly mention, including Diane Arbus in the beginning, which opens on July 12th at Met Breuer. This show will feature rare early works by the artists drawn primarily from the Arbus archive, many of which have never been seen before in public. In September, Jeff will present Faith and Photography, August Salzman in the Holy Land, a small but extraordinary exhibition of 19th century photographs from paper negatives of Jerusalem, and finally, opening in just a few weeks in early March, crime stories, photography and foul play, which surveys crime photographs from rogues galleries of the 1850s to mug shots from today, all drawn from the Met's permanent collection. Please join me in welcoming Jeff Rosenheim, Frederick Brenner, Rosalind Fox Solomon, and Thomas Struth. On behalf of everyone on the stage and all the other artists in this project, in the Brooklyn Museum, it's an honor to see such a full house. It really is a project that deserves our attention. And the program format that Brooklyn and I worked out was that it would be a conversation between the artists really about their work and what it was like to work in Israel and the West Bank. And we're going to begin with Rosalind Solomon, who is my friend, and many of you know that Rosalind and Thomas and Frederick worked over many years on this project. And they went repeatedly to try to understand this place and we'll get to those subjects in just a second. I'm going to just let you know a little bit about the format. Each of the artists have allowed me to select three pictures and we only have about 45 minutes. Unfortunately, there'll be no time for questions, but I think that the format allows the artist to ask questions of each other and comment. And I will interject a few words every now and then, but not too many. The next thing I would say is that the book, which is available, is a conspectus of all of the artist's work, all 12 artists. And what that means is that you can see a survey of what they achieved with the camera. And each of the other, each of the artists also had an opportunity and have explored that opportunity to make individual books of their work. And I highly recommend that you take the opportunity to look carefully at the group catalog. And also for those artists that have produced their books, you'll see what they were doing. It's an unparalleled project to invite artists, some of whom had never been to this place, some of whom had been before, to consider changing their lives just a bit to see what it was like. And I think that's what we'll discuss a little bit. And I'm going to, as I said, begin with Rosalind and she's going to share some ideas and we'll have a dialogue. And it's a new format for us and I hope you'll enjoy the process. Okay, so we're beginning with this picture, which is in the show, where are we, three upstairs. And Rosalind thought that she would begin with this and share some thoughts. This young man through an organization that was bringing teenagers, Jewish and Palestinian teenagers together. And he looked very interesting to me and I asked him if I could photograph him. And I was in his home a couple of days later. I had my assistant deliver me with my equipment to his house, but I asked him to leave because I wanted to establish some kind of, I wanted to communicate with him on a one-to-one basis. It's very important to me to reach out to the people that I photograph on a gut level. At first, this didn't happen right away. This picture didn't happen immediately. We went outside and I shot a roll and I didn't think it was going to be anything. So we came inside and he had on a shirt that was a bit distracting. I asked him if he would mind taking off his shirt and he said okay. Had you ever asked anyone to take their shirt off before? Once. Yes, I had. I had. But I think he was perfectly comfortable about it. So I found this setting which was a good background and then I put up my tripod and he looked at me and I looked at him and there was just a real visceral connection. I didn't know what he was thinking and he probably wondered what I was thinking. But we were directly looking at one another and so then I took the picture. How did you meet him? I met him at this organization that was bringing teenagers together from the West Bank and Tel Aviv and I just asked him if he would allow me. Did you have a way of working? Did you read the yellow pages or how did you find this organization? It seems like you're very careful in your research and that you go pretty far when you travel. Well, no. Someone I had photographed perhaps the day before told me about the organization. One person leads me to another and I have a little bit of a plan but I just sort of take what comes my way in a sense and I'm willing to, if I find somebody interesting then I just follow through on it. There's a little bit of performance in this and it's not just asking someone to take their shirt off but going home with them. Yes, I mean that. You didn't just find this person and it just happened. There must be something else. I asked him. I told him that I was working in a project and would he allow me to photograph him and that was really, that's what happened. That's what happened. Thomas also made pictures, made portraits of residents and how was your experience about asking that question and what happened? Well, I think that Rosalind's work struck me. I mean I was not familiar with your work before and we didn't know each other and I find, it was great portrait, especially in photography, it always matters a lot what happens before the actual photograph and the composition and all these things they don't, they come then inevitably or naturally. I think it's not so, like what's contained in a picture and a photograph. It's like a resume of the encounter, like how it comes to the photograph and that's why, you know, like Alexander or Nadar or any of the great portrait photographers that's always the striking thing and I find that very telling and striking in your work as well. In my case, you know, I make family portraits since 1985 very slowly, a little bit also like one thing leads to the next and sometimes I don't make one for two years or so. So when I was never in Israel or Palestine before and it wasn't, I thought it was an opportunity, the invitation to finally go to this place in the context of my work and not as a tourist or something like that. To work is always a good, some of the best means to encounter and make acquaintance or make contact with a new place and I don't mind a group situation. I think it's quite unusual that we were all, you're not 25 anymore, but we have all the guys which are found to the most unusual thing in this project. So anyway, when I came there and found out that Nick Worblington was already making lots of family portraits, so I thought, okay, maybe I make one or two and in the end it was only one. Then later on I made another two family portraits, one of a Palestinian family and another Israeli family, but they were not so much connected with this project. And since I made not so many pictures and some of them come from different areas of my work, the one picture was enough as a ingredient for the whole set of work and the family came through. Frederick is a person who has photographed when he was like four years old and I think that's one of the most striking pictures Frederick has made in my point of view in the previous work from Diaspora that chose him as a four-year-old with his grandfather. He was eight years old, but he was eight. No, but that's okay. To me it looks like four. And then I photographed him when he was 16 and he was 14. Yeah, so there was, but this one picture where he was four years old in my eyes was kind of an archaic, like it's almost like two people of two generations to sit in a cave. You're reading the Torah, so it was quite something. So anyway, I was curious to meet the guy who of course now was, I don't know, he was 30. He was 34, I think. Yeah, he had already like seven children and the oldest one daughter. He was already 17 or 18 or something like that. So it was, you know, by your introduction and we spent like five hours with them at their home, which for me is also always an important thing. Yeah, so yeah, so the problem of making pictures in this place and we have it. No, we're going to look at another one of Rosalind's pictures, Rosalind. You can see. So anyway, the problem of making pictures of people in this place or in any place is something that Rosalind has spent her career doing and she's been doing it for years now and she shared some interesting stories about this picture and this experience and I think it's also quite revealing. We're going to look at this picture and one more from Rosalind and we're going to move on to Thomas' work and I hope that we'll reconnect again. Rosalind? I was photographing one of the roads that I took was to go to Christian sites and photograph pilgrims and interestingly I learned that there were 4,000 people pilgrims from Ghana who come annually to Israel. So I found them in Jerusalem and then over Christmas, I went for a few days to Bethlehem and I just, someone in the family that I was staying with took me to the field of shepherds and there were lots of tourists around and well, when I saw these people in front of the fresco, I just was fascinated with them and I had my tripod up. I had my strobe on the tripod or on my camera so I could take it off. I just said, may I take your picture and they said yes, sure. Very simple but and I took the picture and I think it's one of the best pictures that I took during the project. I feel as though the technical part of it is something that I've learned over the years and it's really embedded inside of me so that then when I have a chance, when I see something, I can work quickly and the strobe, the flash that I use, has given me the possibility of working in all kinds of lighting situations. The subjects are blind? I thought that one of the men is partially sighted and I was fascinated with his dignity and his face and I couldn't help but think about the partial blindness of most human beings. I think there's also something interesting that I each time when I look at your pictures, I think it doesn't matter that like one doesn't think or they're Jewish or they're Palestinian or it doesn't it doesn't really matter in a way and I like that quite a lot because in this place there's always yeah but this your contrast between the two parties and the conflict or so and in your work it doesn't stop it this kind of drops in your stuff into the dust in a way that I would say you know I was interested in photographing all kinds of people in Israel and I wanted I also was interested in photographing some of the people that I thought were important there but were not as well known. I don't haven't been familiar with pictures of pilgrims and I had no much about them so that so it's interesting to me to photograph the pilgrims and also I found other communities of Africans in Israel who had been there for many many years not the Ethiopians Ethiopian Jews but actually others who had come from Ghana as workers and from Nigeria and this picture that's on the screen right now it's a it's a couple it's a couple oh I'm sorry yeah no no it's fine this picture I had been photographing a family um a large family and um suddenly a person somebody came in the man came in who hadn't been with us and he sat down and and he was the fiance of the the girl the woman in the doorway and um again I had my equipment ready and I just asked him if I could take the picture and uh that's what happened where are we on the west bank in uh in the area of a town called Janine and my assistant um took me to photograph his cousins and that's how I happened to be there so it's a sort of a family connections the sort of one thing leads to another as as as Thomas was saying and you just sort of follow your way there but this is the thread that connects the pictures to you and and and then to us that's what I get um Thomas was saying that and I know Fredra feels um similarly that the experience of being in a place is the experience of knowing some things and not knowing others and that the camera as a recording tool but also as a tool of of of connectivity in a different way to its subject than any other medium leads us on into into other things um we don't have a lot of time I'm sorry I know we'd like to hear um more about um Rosalind's work and what she's done there's the catalog as I say is terrific hers and the projects let's move on to Thomas all right okay um the first picture um uh by the way all the pictures um that we've selected are in the show except for one which is the one after this one with the science picture didn't make it on the wall um but let's talk about this and um it's a again it's an interior and it's a special place um where are we where um uh I mean I just want to say something that the out like the outset of of the project was Fredericks you know that's at least what stayed in my mind always was like like the re like the reason to do this was to try to uh kind of redesign or you're you create a different picture of this place which is something that Frederick often said and I think that that for the participants like the invitees that was not the same thing because you have first of all many of us were never there so you cannot redesign a picture like you cannot reinvent something that that you had yeah the picture before was everybody has tons of information about uh Israel and Palestine through the public media through years since decades so I mean it's just something I think is important to say so here we are uh in in the um at the basilica of the enunciation in in Nazareth and uh when I came there you know I mean we made many different trips through all you to all the area you to all the areas in the in the country and in Palestine West Bank and uh I've been photographing some church interiors before uh particularly in Venice that had Milan Milan also that had to do with your kind of um your artworks that were in still in the original place for which they were made so kind of a seemingly homogenous uh location for for an artwork of your Renaissance piece or something like that when I came here I've I I sense I felt it looks like uh it it it it describes something of the insanity of religion I don't want to offend offend anybody uh here in the audience but the kind of um you know um you know the kind of uh or could maybe better create in in their church in in the way the manner that they that they design their churches or that they how they how they create a place that's not the religion for the individual who's a believer you know as just an individual as a private person but as a kind of outside uh design and I thought this to me looked more like a Stanley Kubrick uh uh uh you're hyperventilated historically unmatching uh expression than anything else so I um I uh said to myself I have to you make a picture because that is a your you represents that uh hysterical uh out of proportion and your unmodest element of this palette of how people deal with our societies or groups of people that deal with uh religion built in stone and then it was sort of I went and I much later I sort of where I said one of the negatives was I had moved during the three minute exposure then I had to go again I went I thought do I really need that picture do I want it do I have to have it for the school of pictures and I after a while I said yes I do and so it was complicated to get in there and so I went again for three days to do the picture again this is the circumstance well we're glad you went back it is kind of um like the weirdest stage set for any performance one could imagine there's also some stopwatch yeah it's like are we in a rocket ship are we in um some sort of strange cave that is uh post apocalypse um your faith um in other things is interesting or questioning of that faith um this picture right now is the one that's um not in the show but we decided and core and I talked about it a little bit this week it's a picture I I kind of adore and um so it's my bias now but this is a picture of another kind of religion it's another kind of space and this is the space of cutting-edge science well uh I've been uh interested in and and I've been photographing places of you'd have to do with science and technology for about nine years or so and this is this is one of the examples that I had to do you know with this project and it's an interesting example because it's a photograph that that yeah as it was plasma fusion it's an experimental setup in at uh Weizmann Institute in Israel and um it's interesting for me because it's something you like sometimes or quite often one makes intuitive decisions you feel attracted by something and you so you make your way through the picture making process and just as on an on an emotional basis you know you feel attracted and you go through it and then later on only you realize why why that attracted me because here also what I normally don't do I made different different exposures with the curtain on the left closed or open in with the different light situations and in the end many months later I realized what it really looks like and what it what I was attracted to that because it's it looks like a traveling situation it looks like a bunch of luggage that was on the k of a like a big steam passenger boat in 1870 where people would immigrate from Hamburg to New York or something like that uh like going into a direction in the future that they wouldn't know where you know how the future would be like that's not what it looks like to me huh that's what it looks like to me I mean so it because I was no because I was attracted I found it funny that the two metal boxes there looked like this old leather it looks like you're photographing in a hospital and that's the patient and I'm not sure the patient is going to survive and and the patient doesn't have a private room and on the other side of that curtain there's another that's exactly all what you're saying uh it doesn't contradict what I feel it's as crazy as the Kubrick scene the scientist is a patient and he doesn't know whether he gets online uh living or dead you know it's it's kind of an open thing it's a it's also quite similar to to an artist uh production in a way I mean I think you know sometimes what we think things are how other people perceive them is very different yeah I see inevitable I see it a little bit as intestines you know all the tubes and it's also true yeah okay um this last one I think we those of us who had the pleasure of being um over there uh with the artists I know I did I had never been to Israel the West Bank I'd never traveled on this part of the world and when I got there I was given the same really generous opportunity to travel the entire country on my own with a team of um advisors to the project which is the same sort of experience that the artists had when they were there just as a preliminary visit to decide whether they wanted to participate and um seeing um the change in the land that development which of course affects everywhere in the world but how it was affecting this desert environment or mostly desert environment was one of the great shocks for me so um this was um something I saw practically as I was coming in to the project Thomas yeah I mean yes I mean this place or the conflict there's all about the land and and I and when I the first time I came to to Israel you will land in Tel Aviv then take a car to to Jerusalem that passed by this settlement Ha-Homah which reminded me of of uh the brogle painting of the Tov Babel which is at the Museum in Vienna and uh it's like typical or you know quite typical expression of this look your stylistic and culturally dislocated architecture that somewhat doesn't fit in this place and then I started to photograph it I went there uh five times and never really worked out so well and and one of the times I came there I just drove around and it's all it's a lot about location scouting to find to identify the the narrative somehow that that you you know necessarily were looking for but to identify the narrative that met us to to me and then I yeah I found this picture you're just somewhere eating like eating the land or you know you're taking it or occupying it and changing it into something else which which happens and I found that a much more striking yeah it's just the most striking image for that that I saw during that time yeah it um there's something about the tongue of this platform um lapping the land and how the land responds to it that interests me it's not just the architecture but that foundation and how the foundation suggests what it suggests and what it challenges us to think about and I think it's it's pretty interesting um to travel in this place because it changes every time you're there I think all of us that live in cities feel that way all the time but I've never seen even in the two years I guess a part that I was there how much it changed it's pretty powerful so we're going to move to to Frederick Brenner's pictures and um Rosalind's pictures were obviously made in um the same place but in a different environment and um uh Frederick is a portraitist as well and um this is one of my favorite pictures um that he made and so I thought we'd start with them yes I when I started the project in Israel I uh I thought I would really do portraits portrait as the ultimate genre you know you need to be 40 50 and then you can start really doing portrait that's what I think and uh I uh I met with this family each of the photographs of course are to be a photographer is to look for encounters I mean it's a journey of encounters and it's usually a photograph start with a story and this is the story that I want to tell and I spend a lot of time with the people that I photograph and weeks month and I and then eventually I decide to take them somewhere but I know the place where they will take me is a much better place than the place where I I want to take them and so we go together it's really a collaborative process and uh but the place where they want to take me is always a better place so they chose the uh the scene yes they show the scene I mean first of all I mean uh this man lives in a settlement called tecora and uh and he has a flock and uh he has a wife and children and uh and uh and I went to I went with him I mean uh he studied at three o'clock in the morning uh uh with a group of people uh Talmud and he uh and so I spent quite a lot of time with him and I decided that this was the most uh what was most representative of who he is what he stands for and what so many I would say settlers stand for basically for me they they read the bible as a book of geography and uh and this uh this is what I this is one of the things I wanted to say here I think it's you know one of the things we know about photography is that um by definition somewhat you you can't photograph the future you you really can't photograph the past you can only really photograph the present and I think this picture questions that um the picture just seems to be so ancient and so modern um and how you achieve that the structure of the picture is remarkable and uh Thomas was talking about Kubrick but this is this is um this is a nearly perfect representation of family and flock that I've ever seen I can't imagine a better one what do they think they live in they live in uh 20 minutes from Jerusalem in the in a settlement called Tekoa uh not far from Erodeon uh and it's very interesting because I've looked at this photograph a lot before deciding to include it and to include it in this way because Thomas looked at it I was I got the great privilege I I initiated and conceived of this project and I believe that I benefited the contribution of each single photographer in this project and I did I always do a lot of field work but here all the more because I also wanted to get the photographers that I invited to give to produce their best work so I traveled a lot but I remember when I was showing Thomas this photograph Thomas suggested at some point that it would be maybe better reframed and I still decided to keep to keep this photograph I think Thomas you didn't like the the the the the sheep entering on the on the left side of the photograph so being part of a group of artists is not something that mature artists um do very often they may teach with other artists but they don't travel and do work in this way I think that one of the crazy wonderful things about this uh was how the artists were traveling the same terrain and interacting with each other and sharing their work at times and I've admired how they've handled the um the commentary among them um and uh I know that there are many other programs that the education department here has organized this is just one I think you'll want to hear from all the other artists um let's look at another of um of Frederick's pictures which is something completely different yes I must say this photograph is key for me I never photographed architecture before and this is the very first photograph I took I did I work for 30 years in black and white this is the first time that I work in color and with this photograph I decided to work in color I both took the photograph in black and white and in color and after this it became obvious that it would be in color so I never work with architecture never work with color and so this photograph is really a pivotal moment in my own work and I must say that I thought no it's not a it's not a place for me this is either for Stephen Shore or either for either for Thomas Truce and I finally went there and I went there many morning at five o'clock this is the former palace hotel which became a Waldorf Astoria franchise and when I saw this building I when I create a project I first nest and then create a big scaffold which is also a scaffold and poetry is a great source of inspiration and I wanted to put as an as an epigraph of the the book that I published a sentence of Fernando Pessoa who say we are shadows made of flies both hollow in the inside and in the outside and this is what this photograph is really about and it's it's truly the key to decipher the rest the body of work that I was going to create and that I didn't know and I didn't even know that it would be a last picture this photograph is one of those those give that life make you you know I those are my neighbors when I live in Jerusalem his father the father of the man who the chef the family the head of the family came from work as dim from war in Caldea in the in the late 30s and and I try to photograph them at home and it was really too small it didn't work and I see them every every Saturday they go with their umbrella and they go to the beach you know when May starts and and I say because because their home was too narrow and it wouldn't give what I wanted to show about them this is a family an Oriental family the parents were born both in Iraq and in in Morocco for the wife and this is you know the typical Mizrahi Oriental family and then one day I decided to go and see where was the place where they were going and then I explore the place and say this is here and then there was this incredible sky you know again the little present that life makes you as Marie Bonaparte say work work is really easy what is truly difficult is grace so and and I just did click well I know this feels at least to me like we've just begun but the program is now sadly done here a few here are a few closing thoughts it's really an honor as someone who works with artists photographers specifically to see them come together and to sort it out to find their way to this place and I know Frederick Brenner has a lot of thanks to to I hope will you will accept mine anyway to give a gift to these artists and to us is is great and the show upstairs is the proof I think each of the artists who are here tonight and think almost all of them are will tell you different stories they want to tell their stories their pictures challenge us to know what the role of the camera is in our society what is it good for why do we persist in looking at photographs is seeing a creative act I think the proof is yes and the the way in which this project came to be and that it is here in Brooklyn I think is a testament to many people I want to thank them all you know who you are I haven't met more generous group of supporters for any project and when you want to do something great I hope you'll call me on the phone thank you thank you thank you I want I I want to thank Jeff who has helped shape the project and the project wouldn't be what it is if you do if he wouldn't have accepted the role that we offered him at an early stage of the project and I want to thank all the photographers who accepted the invitation and enabled me to go through this inner journey beyond the outer journey thank you thank you just a quick thank you to everyone for coming to tonight's event we hope you enjoyed it thank you to Rosalind Thomas and Frederick for being on stage sharing their experiences and insights with us and to Jeff for being such a graceful moderator as Jeff indicated this was just a little taste of more to come we have a special program next week Thursday night at 7 p.m. Frederick will be in conversation with novelist Nicole Kraus we hope you can join us for that as well thank you