Ilan Nachum's Sketches of Israel

Ilan Nachum

This exhibition of three series of works shows the social and political phenomena that have left a mark on everyday life in Israel: the downfall of the first settlers’ utopia, the treatment of the Arab population and the necessary absurdity of the Israeli military. The series Privatized documents the changes accompanying the privatization of the kibbutzim; the nocturnal sequences evoke a sense of loneliness and contrast with the classic iconography of collective life in a kibbutz. One hour on the beach connects the separated groups of secular Israelis and Muslim Arabs in a powerful presence of sky, beach and sea. Targets shows bizarre forms made of junk in the Negev Desert that serve as practice targets for the Israeli Air Force; surreal imagination merges with the reality of war. Ilan Nachum is virtuosic in the way he plays with the possibilities of art photography and documentation. Always careful to maintain a necessary distance, his profound connection with the photographed subject, life in Israel, is vividly palpable.