May 15, 1948: the state of Israel is established, a home for the displaced. May 15, 2008 makes 60 years of Nakba, catastrophe: the displacement of Palestinians to accommodate homeless Jews of Europe. The Chosen People were chosen to occupy the land making refugees of thousands.
How appropriate then a show of photographs of the tormented ground called Broken Promised Land at Robert Koch Gallery, SF. Shai Kremer is an Israeli photographer who has for seven years been documenting, what he calls the "infected landscape." Infected by violence, opposition, notions of control and righteousness.
Kramer's large eerie photographs reflect the still, vast expanse of desert land, but like the images of nuclear test wasteland in Richard Misrach's Desert Cantos series, the living landscape is made to feel vacant by the presence of military detritus, the leftovers of violent scenes. Everything is riddled with bullet holes—how many rounds? How much practice? 60 years worth.
Reading into the images presented you get the layered picture. A burned olive orchard is the result of the recent conflict with Lebanon. The Skyhawk bomber is an object for target practice on the Big Rivers Nature Preserve. The mock village used for urban warfare training is an Arab style village. The huge storage buildings of ammunition and equipment are US built.
In this land, the seeds of conflict are continually planted. The promise of return, for Arab refugee and Jewish refugee alike; the promise of dominion; the promise of peace—all these shared expectations, yet nowhere is the impulse to share. This is the crux of the matter and on this point all fails, save conflict. When will the professed love of the land allow it to exist as a sanctuary, a true nature preserve for all god's creatures?
