katalog-overlapping voices - Ritesinstitute

Shantipi 2000
For the past ten years I have been visiting and participating in tribal festivals
in Israel.
The first one called “shantipi”, in 1997, planted the seeds of the new-old
jewish tribalism.
True to the new age spirit, young people who travel to India and come back
to Israel deal with identity problems after intense experiences. They did not
make do with a trip to the exotic east as mere relief from their hard life in
the military, before going to study or work. These young people interested
me first as objects of a photographic anthropological study. These groups
who were joined by older people seek a new way, in an authentic local garb.
With oriental elements of dressing, food and music, along with jewish aspects,
they indeed show a profound, though marginal, culture emerging in
its full tribal splendour. Thousands of celebrants dancing ecstatically, climbing
ladders of spirituality towards a jewish-buddhist enlightment. Hundreds
of campfires, beating of drums resonating throughout the entire body, jewish
mantras said over and over again. The deeper my contemplation probed the
anthropological phenomenon, the more I felt part of it.
Documentary photography has always attracted me with its scholarly aspects,
with the latter’s wondering and curious gaze aimed at the world’s state
of affairs. This gaze can be ingenuous and devoid of preconceived ideologies,
or conceptual and critical, imposing political or philosophical questions
and seeking both certainty and doubt.
The photographic portrait is one of the most magnificent and difficult themes.
Already in the 19th century the photographer Felix Nadar defined the portrait
as an “intimate likeness”, as a kind of touch. I can recall the work of
the North American Indian by Edward Curtis and the portraits August Sander
made of German people as 20th century man. And later the work Irving
Penn devoted to the American hippie flower power movement in the sixties,
and the big west people by Richard Avedon.
As a teacher of the history of photography, I feel deep love for this enchanting
medium.